Epic fail.

WSJ editorial:

Our health-care system rests on the principle that, although we own our bodies, the community or state ought to be responsible for paying the cost of repairing them. This is for the ostensibly noble purpose of redistributing the potentially ruinous expense of the medical care of unfortunate individuals.

I don’t think of ‘owning my body’. It IS me, not a suit of clothes or a Mercedes I can do without.

The system also does NOT “rest on the principle” that “the community or state ought to be responsible for paying the cost of repairing them”. The system rests on the principle that pain and suffering from illness and accident is bad and should be alleviated.

But, the U.S. Constitution says the government is in part to “Provide for the General Welfare” of the People. One way of doing that is to enable doctors and hospitals to do what they do and another is to enable corporations, in particular insurance companies, to help people pay for their care and another, we are now seeing, is to provide insurance plans at prices people can afford when the private sector does not.

We, as a people, choose, in general, to “Provide” by enabling one another to provide products and services for one another. In some instances, such as national defense, the government acts directly. In this healthcare reform we are continuing to enable private caregivers, insurers and employers to help people, while directly helping those who can’t help themselves. Even there the public option is only enabling and not financial assistance. It’s just the expansion of Medicaid which directly helps the poor. We endeavor to keep the ’safety net’ part of government programs small.

It sounds to me like the WSJ needs a better class of editorialist.

I don’t imagine anyone on the WSJ editorial staff has any trouble getting health care – or repairs on their beemer, for that matter. As for the analogy, government doesn’t repair our cars but it does provide some public transportation, since they are the only ones who can do it. A lot of it is crap, though, so we need a lot more of it, not less, and a lot better. I can replace a car or do without one, but we need SOME transportation. Not so with my body. And I’m not going to be suddenly hit with a $20,000.00 car repair, which will kill me if I don’t get it fixed. I do, however, require basic car insurance, which is another reform story. And I do want health care, not symptom swatting.

The government mandates minimal standards for safe vehicles, for mileage standards, and for their safe production and distribution. It regulates interstate commerce and freight charges.

Narrowing the issue to personal transportation vehicles of choice doesn’t much help their argument. How you get to work, be it moped, ten-year old Taurus or armored limo, doesn’t affect public health. It has no impact on schools, hospitals, public and private offices, the avoidance of pandemics or the maintenance of competitive levels of productivity by having healthier, safer, more secure family lives.

The WSJ doesn’t much care what the government spends taxpayers’ money on, so long as it goes to the Right people, exactly the right people, and no one else – and that it get nothing back in exchange for it.

It’s OpEd pieces like this – on a page that David Brooks used to edit – that should inform his readers where he really comes from. Public intellectual, objective, principled conservative my ass.

That was then, this is now. Psychiatry and mental health practice have changed. And now, Szasz is just a libertarian fuckwit.