Now on the other side of the spectrum, a conservative Christian from Texan also a libertarian, make a persuasive argument against Health Care. Engelhardt take a unique approach to this issue, in that he argues that for a person to resolve a moral controversy, one must have particular specific background on the moral premises involved. And he further states that neither an appeal to God nor reason nor intuition can give a universally accepted content-full moral premises. Thus, there is no canonical content-full morality, so Health Care policy can't derive its moral authority from a prior understanding of Justice, fairness or equality. Thus everything we just stated just goes out the window because those arguments for Health Care are based on “prior understanding” of the theories of justice, fairness, equality and philosophy. So, according to Engelhardt, Health Care policy can only derive its moral authority from the consent of the governed. But he begs the question, how much consent do we need? A majority?
According to Engelhardt, we will need the consent of the governed to get the moral authority for a Health Care policy. However, Engelhardt in his theory did not think that the American public would support such a policy, but following with Engelhardt's theory, 60%-75% of Americans support Universal Health Care. So clearly, Engelhardt's objection to Health Care through the “consent of the governed” argument is completely refuted. But Engelhardt shows what he thinks are problems to such a Health Care policy. Engelhardt says that if we employ a Universal Health Care policy, people will feel at liberty to gamble with their health by engaging in risky behavior since others are paying for it. But such a statement is utterly false because we cannot just rule out something as renovating as Health Care based on a probable behavior people may or may not exhibit.
And in many cases, this is already a problem, as seen by our speedy drunk drivers or addicted smokers. And in order to discourage any increases in such reckless behavior or a “gambling with life” act, we can employ a “sin tax.” Much like what we do with cigarette smokers (and their taxes) in New York State, we can have those people engaging in more risky behavior pay more towards their own care. Another issue Engelhardt raises is the multiple notions of equality or the unavoidable inequalities such as women living longer than men, or the wealthier healthier than the poor or people with higher social status getting better health care. But we must make a big distinction here, we are not asking or urging for an equality of the treatment or health care outcome. Such a thing would be too varied and impossible to actually implement in real life.
Rather, we ask for the equality of opportunity, for every single person to receive the Health Care they deserve as citizens on this nation. So Engelhardt argues that Health Care intrudes on particular moral visions, but in reality, this is already a problem. 9 million children without health care and 47 million American with nowhere to go for their health needs are already intruding on many people's “particular moral visions.” However, to seriously address Engelhardt's concerns, we can look towards the systems employed by our brothers in Canada or Western Europe that have employed vouchers and/or tier systems (UK & Germany) to help provide us with the necessary “blueprint” we need for our own custom system here in the states. The system is Europe is this: the single payersystems, in which healthcare is paid for and organized by the government with money from income taxes (as in Britain and Sweden) and the other is social insurance or sickness fund systems (as in Germany and France), in which healthcare is financed through mandatory premiums calculated as a percentage of wages.
There is also the option of private insurance, which many people tend to use as well. But overall, all aspects of health care are covered in the cost efficient manner. With health being taken to such serious lengths, many people worry that there will be temptation to restrict freedom of choice in such a Universal Health Care system or that there will be a medicalized view of lifestyles. However, we must realize that these concerns are already problems in our society. For example, our freedom of choice is being limited and narrowed considerably when our employer covers our health care costs with certain physicians or plans (or procedures) and not others. And for the millions, who are uninsured, their freedom of choice is certainly restricted to a point where they have no choice and none to turn to once they get sick. And the medicalized view of lifestyles are already in full swing in our society, with fat or obese people seen in a negative context and smokers and alcoholics in the same boat as the fat people. So to say that these are problems already in our existing systems would be no unfair exaggeration.
