WEBVTT NOTE Is Healthcare a Basic Human Right? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.000 We're going to go from the free market pencil to health care, which is not quite the free market. 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:15.200 How's everybody's temperature, by the way? Comfortable? Good? All right. 3 00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:22.600 I'm sure we can either make you hot or cold by the end of the day. 4 00:00:22.600 --> 00:00:27.800 Anyway, we hear this all the time. Health care is a basic human right, right? 5 00:00:27.800 --> 00:00:47.800 We've heard this all year long, and during this debate on Capitol Hill, in fact, Mark mentioned Mr. Obama, the President, and he stated firmly and without hesitation that healthcare is a basic human right. 6 00:00:47.800 --> 00:01:17.800 and he has plenty of support for this position, like another community organizer, Donna Smith, she's an organizer for the California Nurses Association and she wrote that granting that right is not something to be calculated differently in swing congressional districts, off-year strategy, second term presidential term planning, it is your duty to me, to my fellow citizens and to you, 7 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:24.800 Every other developed nation in the world sees health care as one of the obligations of government. 8 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:31.800 But can health care really be a basic human right? 9 00:01:31.800 --> 00:01:36.800 Well, we need to talk about rights, and there are two types of rights. 10 00:01:36.800 --> 00:01:43.800 First, there are positive rights, and positive rights are really just desires 11 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:37.800 So the corresponding obligation therefore violates other people's negative rights to liberty by the taking of their property and their income without their consent. 12 00:02:37.800 --> 00:02:45.800 So an expansive combination of rights is inconsistent with a more fundamental right to be free. 13 00:02:45.800 --> 00:02:50.800 Liberty, of course, means that people rule themselves. 14 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:56.800 And voluntary arrangements are the means to resolving conflicts that we have. 15 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:04.800 But when government assigns positive rights to others, it means that someone else rules over those choices and resources, 16 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:07.800 taken from those forced to pay. 17 00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:15.800 However, since no one has the right to rob others, if government is to remain within the narrow range consistent with equal rights, 18 00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:19.800 no one can delegate that power to the government. 19 00:03:19.800 --> 00:03:25.800 So we can't say that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave 20 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:33.800 if some of us are forced to pay for other people's health care or housing or anything else. 21 00:03:33.800 --> 00:03:50.800 So, while Nurse Donna is claiming that healthcare is a basic human right, someone else is going to have to pay, and they're going to have to have their rights violated to pay Nurse Donna, or Dr. Donna, of the world to provide that right. 22 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:56.800 So, this right to healthcare is simply not a legitimate right. 23 00:03:56.800 --> 00:04:07.800 The legitimate rights are negative rights, and in this case people have a right not to be aggressed against, have their property stolen either by individuals or by the government. 24 00:04:07.800 --> 00:04:11.800 We have a right to take care of ourselves and to protect ourselves. 25 00:04:11.800 --> 00:04:22.800 So we have a right to go seek the health care that we need, but we don't have the right to receive from others health care. 26 00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:33.800 Now, I'm not all that old, as much as some of you may think I am, but I remember when doctors actually made house calls. 27 00:04:33.800 --> 00:04:39.800 And there's a few in the audience probably remember that. I mean, now you can't get a doctor to make a house call. 28 00:04:39.800 --> 00:04:46.800 It makes sense now, if you get sick, that you should have someone in your household load you up in the car 29 00:04:46.800 --> 00:05:16.800 and take you a waiting room to hang around with some other sick people and wait and see the doctor and of course probably get sicker in the process and that's the way the process works but I remember a day when back in Abilene, Kansas where I grew up that my doctor, Dr. Rohrbaugh, Rocky Rohrbaugh, would charge three to four dollars for a house call. 30 00:05:16.800 --> 00:05:26.800 Now, $3 or $4 then is not what $3 or $4 is today, but it's, say, $30 or $40. Not a bad deal. 31 00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:31.800 And what I remember most about doctors back then is the doctor's office, how small they were. 32 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:35.800 You'd go in, you'd wait in a waiting room, and then you'd have a little receptionist, 33 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:41.800 and then you'd have examination rooms. Made perfect sense, right? 34 00:05:41.800 --> 00:05:51.800 Right? But now, what do doctors' offices have? They have big rooms with lots of files and people on computers. 35 00:05:51.800 --> 00:05:57.800 And what are those people doing? They're trying to get paid. They're trying to get the doctor paid. 36 00:05:57.800 --> 00:06:04.800 Because for most people, they pay for their health care, not with their own dollars, but with insurance. 37 00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:34.800 Insurance. They make a small little payment, a little co-pay, and then the rest of the payment for the medical procedure is done through those people working in that file room, and it's the same way with medication. Insurance pays for a certain amount, and you might make a co-pay, but for medicine 38 00:06:34.800 --> 00:06:46.800 So that's the way it is with most people. If you don't have insurance, many people go to the emergency room. If they get sick, they go to the emergency room and the taxpayers pick up the tab. 39 00:06:46.800 --> 00:07:02.800 So the price mechanism that Mark was talking about earlier doesn't work in health care. The reason it doesn't work is that you as the consumer who's buying the health care, you don't pay for it. You don't negotiate. 40 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:14.800 The only place you see the price mechanism work in healthcare is elective surgeries, cosmetic procedures, and then supply and demand move pricing in those areas. 41 00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:22.800 But for run-of-the-mill healthcare, you don't drive by a hospital and they have a big sign. 42 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:29.800 You never see a big sign on the side of the building. Appendectomy is 1995 this month. 43 00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:32.800 I mean, it just doesn't, it just never happens, right? 44 00:07:32.800 --> 00:07:40.800 Pharmacies, now they may discount their milk, they may discount their household goods, 45 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:45.800 but you never see in a pharmacy penicillin half off, right? It never happens. 46 00:07:45.800 --> 00:07:55.800 So, we as consumers shop for the best price and the best service for everything except healthcare. 47 00:07:55.800 --> 00:07:58.800 And why don't we shop for the best price? 48 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:07.800 Well, if someone else is picking up the bill, first of all, are you going to be inclined to use more or less of that good? 49 00:08:07.800 --> 00:08:13.800 Well, you're going to be inclined to use more of that good, especially if time doesn't have much value to you. 50 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:21.800 Now, most of us don't go to the doctor when we don't need to because we don't want to sit around and wait. 51 00:08:21.800 --> 00:08:40.800 which not only do you get to wait for the doctor, but then he gives you a little piece of paper and you have to go to another building, you have to get back in your car and drive to your pharmacy and then you get to wait again for your medicine. 52 00:08:40.800 --> 00:08:47.800 Now, you know, people are describing this as the free market, but of course it's not. 53 00:08:47.800 --> 00:08:52.800 It needs fixed, but it doesn't need fixed with more government. 54 00:08:52.800 --> 00:08:57.800 So you might say, well, your examples aren't terribly relevant. 55 00:08:57.800 --> 00:09:00.800 I mean, medical care isn't like other goods. 56 00:09:00.800 --> 00:09:03.800 I mean, medical care is an emergency, right? 57 00:09:03.800 --> 00:09:07.800 If you're sick, you need to get well right away. 58 00:09:07.800 --> 00:09:37.800 Well, not every medical procedure is an emergency, number one, and number two, I think there's other emergencies out there, like eating and drinking, housing, shelter, these are all emergencies, and here in, you know, about, you know, a few minutes, you're going to have those hunger pangs for that Chick-fil-A box lunch, and you're going to say, boy, that's an emergency, I need that, 59 00:09:37.800 --> 00:09:43.800 And if we want food, we have all kinds of choices, right? 60 00:09:43.800 --> 00:09:48.300 We can go to the grocery store and buy food and cook it ourselves. 61 00:09:48.300 --> 00:09:50.300 We can go to restaurants. 62 00:09:50.300 --> 00:09:55.300 We can get food any way we want it. 63 00:09:55.300 --> 00:09:56.800 Same way with housing. 64 00:09:56.800 --> 00:09:58.300 You can get housing any way you want it. 65 00:09:58.300 --> 00:09:59.300 Where do you want to live? 66 00:09:59.300 --> 00:10:00.800 How much do you want to pay? 67 00:10:00.800 --> 00:10:02.300 So on and so forth. 68 00:10:02.300 --> 00:10:07.300 So price, quality, convenience drive those decisions. 69 00:10:07.300 --> 00:10:12.300 Now imagine if we got food and housing the way we get health care. 70 00:10:12.300 --> 00:10:18.000 I mean, there's no way that you can call health care the way we've been getting it the free market. 71 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.800 So how did this all happen? 72 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:27.900 Well, first, the medical profession was monopolized by the AMA, the American Medical Association, in the early 1900s. 73 00:10:27.900 --> 00:10:36.400 What the AMA did was restrict the number of medical schools and who could go to medical school and how many doctors were produced. 74 00:10:36.400 --> 00:10:49.400 So that's the first thing that happened, and then ten years later, around 1910, there was a national conference calling for universal health and social insurance. 75 00:10:49.400 --> 00:10:56.400 So this started a long time ago in America, but the big change happened during World War II. 76 00:10:56.400 --> 00:11:09.400 What happened in World War II is there's a number of, obviously, soldiers drafted to fight in Europe and the Pacific. 77 00:11:09.400 --> 00:11:14.400 This took a number of people out of the workforce, defense contractors. 78 00:11:14.400 --> 00:11:22.400 Maybe you've seen the posters of Rosie the Riveter, you know, making planes. 79 00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:52.400 so a lot of people working for defense contractors so employers there was a shortage of labor and they had to attract people to work for them wages were exploding and what the government do well they they placed a ceiling on wages they had wage controls so employers couldn't pay more than a certain amount so if they couldn't pay over a certain amount what did they do well they offered other perks 80 00:11:52.400 --> 00:12:03.400 The other perk was insurance, and that's why most people, to this day, get their insurance from their employer. 81 00:12:03.400 --> 00:12:11.400 This is really no different than banks. When banks used to be restricted by the amount of interest that they paid to attract deposits, 82 00:12:11.400 --> 00:12:16.400 they used to give away toasters and other sorts of small appliances. 83 00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:28.400 So as the market tried to deal with government price restrictions or wage restrictions, it unleashed this genie out of the bottle that's been with us ever since. 84 00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:40.400 And it's really become the custom that if you get a job anywhere, insurance is a benefit that goes with it. 85 00:12:40.400 --> 00:12:50.800 was with it. And so the seeds of our health care system were sown a long time ago, back 86 00:12:50.800 --> 00:13:01.440 during World War II. And after World War II, President Harry Truman, in a speech in November 87 00:13:01.440 --> 00:13:10.040 19, 1945, he'd only been president seven months, he said, the health of American children, 88 00:13:10.040 --> 00:13:16.040 like their education should be recognized as a definite public responsibility. 89 00:13:16.040 --> 00:13:21.360 The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health 90 00:13:21.360 --> 00:13:27.520 was part of Truman's economic Bill of Rights. 91 00:13:27.520 --> 00:13:34.040 He said the right to adequate protection from economic fears such as sickness had to be 92 00:13:34.040 --> 00:13:37.040 addressed by the government. 93 00:13:37.040 --> 00:13:44.240 So he was essentially proposing a national healthcare insurance fund that would be created 94 00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:47.440 and run by the federal government. 95 00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:51.560 And even the AMA at the time, the American Medical Association, called the bill socialized 96 00:13:51.560 --> 00:13:59.200 medicine and said that those in the Truman White House were followers of the Moscow line, 97 00:13:59.200 --> 00:14:00.440 party line. 98 00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:09.800 So despite having lots of support from big labor unions and others, Truman was forced 99 00:14:09.800 --> 00:14:18.440 to abandon this attempt to have the government take over health care. 100 00:14:18.440 --> 00:14:24.760 But like most bad ideas hatched in Washington, part of Truman's proposal lived on and it 101 00:14:24.760 --> 00:14:27.480 resurfaced 20 years later. 102 00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:39.320 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law. Medicare provides health care to those over 65. 103 00:14:39.320 --> 00:14:45.720 And when Johnson signed the bill into law, he actually selected the Harry S. Truman Library, 104 00:14:45.720 --> 00:14:50.520 Independence, Missouri, and he reminded onlookers that Medicare, quote, 105 00:14:50.520 --> 00:14:55.520 all started really with the man from independence." 106 00:14:55.520 --> 00:15:00.360 So in other words, it's taken a long time, about a hundred years, to get to where we 107 00:15:00.360 --> 00:15:09.880 are, to this latest iteration of patching together health care in America. 108 00:15:09.880 --> 00:15:16.520 And even under Obamacare, what we have is really not total socialization, but just this 109 00:15:16.520 --> 00:15:21.480 Trying to patch up this failed system that we have that is not anything like the free 110 00:15:21.480 --> 00:15:26.440 market and the price system that Mark described earlier. 111 00:15:26.440 --> 00:15:34.560 The fact is, 29% of all Americans depend on the federal government for their health care. 112 00:15:34.560 --> 00:15:36.000 29%. 113 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:40.700 And for those over 65, the percentage is 75%. 114 00:15:40.700 --> 00:15:50.300 So most people over 65 get their health care provided for by Uncle Sam, and this was brought 115 00:15:50.300 --> 00:15:57.200 out recently in these town hall meetings when you had a gentleman who was shouting at his 116 00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:06.340 congressman from South Carolina and he said, keep your government hands off my Medicare. 117 00:16:06.340 --> 00:16:11.900 And the guy just couldn't be convinced that Medicare already is a government program. 118 00:16:11.900 --> 00:16:19.380 So our healthcare is this mixture of private enterprise and regulatory apparatus, subsidies, 119 00:16:19.380 --> 00:16:26.980 licenses, controls, patents, monopolies, outright welfare, consumption controls. 120 00:16:26.980 --> 00:16:34.460 I mean it's a system that needs to be fixed, but certainly, but not by government. 121 00:16:34.460 --> 00:16:47.460 We need more freedom injected into this, we need to have the government peeled away, but that's not what's going on. 122 00:16:47.460 --> 00:16:56.460 So really we've had experiments in socialized medicine around the world for many, many years. 123 00:16:56.460 --> 00:17:13.460 In fact, Mises pointed out in 1922 that whether it's healthcare or any sort of business, without property and market prices, economic rationality disappears. 124 00:17:13.460 --> 00:17:17.460 Result is unworkable, it's chaotic, and it's impoverishing. 125 00:17:17.460 --> 00:17:25.460 So medical socialism is particularly devastating because of the effects, the capacity for us to stay healthy and alive. 126 00:17:25.460 --> 00:17:40.460 It robs us of the rights to exchange and choose. In fact, Mises wrote about state-run medical systems, and there were a few even at the time, and there still are to this day. 127 00:17:40.460 --> 00:17:52.460 The Army has its own medical system, and prisons have their own medical system, and these are not centers of health, but of disease and disaster. 128 00:17:52.460 --> 00:18:04.460 So, if we go back to the beginning of my talk, you remember one of our real rights is the right to seek and obtain medical care through voluntary exchange. 129 00:18:04.460 --> 00:18:10.460 And this increased socialization will actually destroy that right. 130 00:18:10.460 --> 00:18:17.460 Now, I wanted to talk a little bit about insurance, because insurance gets bound up in this discussion. 131 00:18:17.460 --> 00:18:25.980 discussion, and much of the debate's been about the portability of insurance policies, 132 00:18:25.980 --> 00:18:33.460 and insurance companies not allowing pre-existing conditions, right? 133 00:18:33.460 --> 00:18:40.180 Hear this all the time, people get excluded, they can't buy insurance because they have 134 00:18:40.180 --> 00:18:44.220 some sort of health problem that keeps them from getting insured. 135 00:18:44.220 --> 00:18:50.860 And this is unfair and something needs to be done about it is the case that's always made. 136 00:18:50.860 --> 00:18:54.980 Well, imagine if you will that we're not talking about health insurance but we're talking about 137 00:18:54.980 --> 00:18:58.060 casualty insurance, fire insurance. 138 00:18:58.060 --> 00:19:03.660 And let's just say you're selling casualty insurance, okay, and you're on the phone one 139 00:19:03.660 --> 00:19:10.180 day and you get a call from a guy and the guy says, listen, I need to buy insurance 140 00:19:10.180 --> 00:19:14.140 on my house, fire insurance on my house, and you go, great, that's great, that's what we're 141 00:19:14.140 --> 00:19:23.140 Tell me a little bit about your property. Where's it at? What's it worth? Is there a lien on the property? Usual things. 142 00:19:23.140 --> 00:19:28.140 And then you say, you know, he gives you that information very rapidly. He's in a hurry. 143 00:19:28.140 --> 00:19:38.140 You say, we'll insure the house and the policy as soon as you should make arrangements for payment, and we can go, you know, we can do an inspection of the house. 144 00:19:38.140 --> 00:19:44.140 and that'll be maybe later today and the person says no no I'd really need the coverage right now 145 00:19:44.140 --> 00:19:49.580 right now I got to have it right now and you said well why are you in a loan closing is the lender 146 00:19:49.580 --> 00:19:58.140 requiring that you have proof as insurance right away he says no my house is on fire I need to 147 00:19:58.140 --> 00:20:03.540 insure it for the full value well that's really what we're talking about with it pre-existing 148 00:20:03.540 --> 00:20:14.460 and Conditions is that what people are demanding is that the people with burning houses be 149 00:20:14.460 --> 00:20:20.100 lumped in the same risk pool as people with houses that aren't on fire. 150 00:20:20.100 --> 00:20:26.020 Not only aren't they on fire, they're supposed to be in the same risk pool as houses that 151 00:20:26.020 --> 00:20:30.140 might be located next to the fire station. 152 00:20:30.140 --> 00:20:40.940 So that's the fallacy of including those with pre-existing conditions into this risk pool. 153 00:20:40.940 --> 00:20:49.460 You know, that's maybe, it's not insurance to do that, they call it insurance, but it's 154 00:20:49.460 --> 00:20:57.180 really just a redistribution of assets by government force when you require that the 155 00:20:57.180 --> 00:21:00.680 and the burning houses be thrown in the same risk pool. 156 00:21:00.680 --> 00:21:08.180 So, when you look at it in those terms, it becomes quite clear, 157 00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:15.180 but evidently those in Washington haven't quite thought about it that way. 158 00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:17.180 And if you turn things around a little bit, 159 00:21:17.180 --> 00:21:24.180 I think a lot of you probably drive in the audience here today, so you have car insurance. 160 00:21:24.180 --> 00:21:31.580 In fact, the premiums for your car insurance is probably pretty high, right? 161 00:21:31.580 --> 00:21:37.140 Insurance companies have determined that you're a riskier pool than normal. 162 00:21:37.140 --> 00:21:44.580 Younger drivers tend to be less experienced behind the wheel and possibly more aggressive, shall we say. 163 00:21:44.580 --> 00:21:50.540 So they tend to charge more for that insurance, right? 164 00:21:50.540 --> 00:21:57.940 but they lower the premiums if you're a good student and other things like that and that's what insurers do. 165 00:21:57.940 --> 00:22:06.340 They assess risk and there's a pool they throw you into and they don't know who is going to have accidents 166 00:22:06.340 --> 00:22:15.940 but they know a certain group of people are going to have an accident and they've determined over time that younger drivers have this accident. 167 00:22:15.940 --> 00:22:20.740 But imagine if car insurance was like health insurance, the health insurance we have. 168 00:22:20.740 --> 00:22:28.620 It'd cover you not only in the case of an accident, it would cover oil changes, tires, you name it. 169 00:22:28.620 --> 00:22:32.100 What would happen? Would you use your car more or less? 170 00:22:32.100 --> 00:22:37.140 Well, you'd use it more, because your insurance is going to cover everything. 171 00:22:37.140 --> 00:22:42.820 It'd cover for wear and tear. You'd be less careful when you drive. 172 00:22:42.820 --> 00:22:51.820 And so there would be ramifications if car insurance wasn't like the health insurance that we have today. 173 00:22:51.820 --> 00:22:56.820 So there are real ways to solve the health care problem. 174 00:22:56.820 --> 00:23:04.820 And Hans Hoppe has outlined four simple steps to solve the problem. 175 00:23:04.820 --> 00:23:11.820 And the first thing he would do is eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools. 176 00:23:11.820 --> 00:23:16.820 Hospitals, pharmacies, medical doctors and health care personnel. 177 00:23:16.820 --> 00:23:25.820 And he makes the case that the supply would immediately increase, prices would fall, and there would be a greater variety of health care services. 178 00:23:25.820 --> 00:23:38.820 And there's been a lot of discussion during this health care debate on Capitol Hill that Obamacare will actually bring down costs, right? We've heard that. 179 00:23:38.820 --> 00:23:48.820 The Office of Budget Crunching, or whatever they call it, has said that there'll be no effect on the deficit. 180 00:23:48.820 --> 00:23:59.820 Well, that's crazy, of course. If you insure more people, if you require people to have insurance, the demand for health care will go up. 181 00:23:59.820 --> 00:24:02.820 They've not addressed the supply of health care. 182 00:24:02.820 --> 00:24:08.820 And thus, the cost of healthcare is going to continue to increase under the latest proposal. 183 00:24:08.820 --> 00:24:18.820 But if we went the Hoppe route, we would have a decrease in costs by eliminating these licensing requirements. 184 00:24:18.820 --> 00:24:22.820 And you'd have all kinds of people get into the healthcare business. 185 00:24:22.820 --> 00:24:27.820 Of course, some people would, they freak out about that notion. 186 00:24:27.820 --> 00:24:35.140 Well, gee, oh my gosh, my doctor wouldn't be certified by the law. 187 00:24:35.140 --> 00:24:37.740 I mean, we'd all be at risk. 188 00:24:37.740 --> 00:24:42.820 Well, I think the first thing you do when you select a doctor is not, 189 00:24:42.820 --> 00:24:49.740 you don't call the government and say, gee, give me a list of all the doctors who are board certified. 190 00:24:49.740 --> 00:24:51.740 What you do is ask people at work. 191 00:24:51.740 --> 00:24:55.260 I know that's the first thing I did when I came to Auburn 18 months ago. 192 00:24:55.260 --> 00:24:57.020 I asked the people here at the Institute. 193 00:24:57.020 --> 00:25:03.100 I Got Sick, who's your doctor? Do you like your guy? Do you like your guy? So on and so forth. 194 00:25:03.100 --> 00:25:13.340 And that's how the market would work. Unfortunately, when you have the government certifying doctors, 195 00:25:13.340 --> 00:25:22.900 or for that matter, if you have the SEC saying that guys like Bernie Madoff are okay, then people think they're okay. 196 00:25:22.900 --> 00:25:31.900 They don't do their own due diligence. They don't ask people whether either doctors or financial advisors are good. 197 00:25:31.900 --> 00:25:35.900 They just take it for granted because the government says it's okay. 198 00:25:35.900 --> 00:25:41.900 So that's the first thing we would do. We'd eliminate all the licensing requirements. 199 00:25:41.900 --> 00:25:47.900 We would also eliminate all government restrictions on the production of sale pharmaceutical products and medical services. 200 00:25:47.900 --> 00:25:53.400 Because it takes not years, it takes decades to get new drugs approved. 201 00:25:53.400 --> 00:26:01.820 And if that apparatus was thrown, done away with, costs and prices would fall tremendously. 202 00:26:01.820 --> 00:26:04.660 You see this debate all the time. 203 00:26:04.660 --> 00:26:11.020 Various states would like to have it approved that people could import drugs through the 204 00:26:11.020 --> 00:26:12.380 internet from Canada. 205 00:26:12.380 --> 00:26:14.500 And you see it time and time again. 206 00:26:14.500 --> 00:26:15.980 They talk about doing it. 207 00:26:15.980 --> 00:26:22.540 The drugs are cheaper, but they say, no, wait a minute, that's a health risk. 208 00:26:22.540 --> 00:26:29.460 You know, if you're trying to get your drugs from Canada, there's a health risk. 209 00:26:29.460 --> 00:26:35.740 We don't know what's going on up there, north of the border, so we just can't allow that. 210 00:26:35.740 --> 00:26:37.300 And you see this all the time. 211 00:26:37.300 --> 00:26:40.420 Need to eliminate all those government restrictions. 212 00:26:40.420 --> 00:26:43.060 Need to deregulate the health insurance industry. 213 00:26:43.060 --> 00:26:48.060 would be his next solution. 214 00:26:48.060 --> 00:26:50.660 We talked about insurance a little bit 215 00:26:50.660 --> 00:26:54.940 and how absurd it is that insurers in the healthcare arena 216 00:26:54.940 --> 00:26:59.940 have to insure people who are high risk 217 00:27:01.020 --> 00:27:05.700 at the same rate as people who are low risk. 218 00:27:07.560 --> 00:27:11.660 And Hoppe makes the case that he gets thrown 219 00:27:11.660 --> 00:27:18.860 in the same pool as, say, professional football players who arguably have the greater propensity 220 00:27:18.860 --> 00:27:23.620 to get injured than, say, economics professors. 221 00:27:23.620 --> 00:27:28.500 So, of course, in the case of Hoppe, I'm not sure that's the case. 222 00:27:28.500 --> 00:27:38.400 But anyway, obviously there's two different risk pools, but insurers are not allowed to 223 00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:48.000 to price people who are less risky differently than those who present a greater risk. 224 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:53.600 Also, he would, and finally, he would eliminate all subsidies to the sick and unhealthy. 225 00:27:53.600 --> 00:27:57.400 When you subsidize anything, you get more of it. 226 00:27:57.400 --> 00:28:06.400 Subsidize the ill and disease, you promote carelessness, indigest, dependency, and that's what we have. 227 00:28:06.400 --> 00:28:14.200 We have, with Medicare and Medicaid, we have created this sort of dependency. 228 00:28:14.200 --> 00:28:19.600 So there are ways to fix America's health care problem. 229 00:28:19.600 --> 00:28:21.960 It is not with more government. 230 00:28:21.960 --> 00:28:27.120 We do have a right to seek and choose and pay for the best health care our money can 231 00:28:27.120 --> 00:28:28.800 buy. 232 00:28:28.800 --> 00:28:32.820 But what we're getting slowly but surely is what the government decides is the health 233 00:28:32.820 --> 00:28:41.820 and Health Care. It believes we should have, and I believe that is the worst possible health care that we can have. Thank you.