Left-Libertarian Approach to Healthcare

[Havet]

So what would a left-libertarian approach to health care policy look like? At a minimum it would have to include:

1. Repealing laws that have the effect of cartelising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel) the medical industry (e.g., the licensure monopoly granted to the A.M.A. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association)), thus artificially boosting the cost of medical care. (Link of interest regarding AMA (http://www.healthe-livingnews.com/articles/american_medical_association_sorbid_history.html))

2. Repealing laws that have the effect of rendering the labour market oligopsonistic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopsony), thus artificially lowering people’s ability to pay for (and collectively negotiate for) medical care.

3. Repealing laws that shift healthcare funds from the 25%-devoured-by-overhead voluntary sector to the 75%-devoured-by-overhead coercive sector, thus decreasing the amount of healthcare that gets to needy recipients.

4. Repealing laws that transfer the power to make medical decisions for individuals from those individuals to centralized bodies, thus increasing the impact and scope of fatally bad decisions and suppressing the competitive signals that allow the identification of better and worse policies.

5. Repealing laws that wiped out the old mutual-insurance systems (basically HMO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMO)s run by the patients instead of by corporations) and empowered insurance companies at the expense of patients.

6. Repealing laws that suppress innovation and distribution in the pharmaceutical industry in the name of “intellectual property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property).”

Until the unlikely day when the Republican Party embraces this program, let’s hear no more of their favouring a free-market approach to health care.

EDIT: This is NOT an attempt to REFORM THE SYSTEM. This is merely a mockery of republican proposals. For a more correct understanding of this thread, please imagine a revolution, and replace the word REPEAL with the word DESTROY. Thank you.

[Havet]

I'd also add:

7. Repeal Anglo-American legal systems that discriminate against non-hierarchical institutions in the field of medicine and grant tax reliefs to hierarchical medical institutions.

[Self-Owner]

You probably wouldn't count me as a left libertarian, but, fuck yeah, where do I sign up?

[leninwasarightwingnutcase]

This is neither left nor libertarian. Around here (and in most of the world outside north america) 'libertarian' means stuff like the spanish revolution and is always left. The market worship you call 'libertarianism' has no significant presence outside north america, and even there is marginal off the internet. What you describe is right-liberal at best.

[RebelDog]

So what would a left-libertarian approach to health care policy look like? At a minimum it would have to include:

1. Repealing laws that have the effect of cartelising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel) the medical industry (e.g., the licensure monopoly granted to the A.M.A. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association)), thus artificially boosting the cost of medical care. (Link of interest regarding AMA (http://www.healthe-livingnews.com/articles/american_medical_association_sorbid_history.html))

2. Repealing laws that have the effect of rendering the labour market oligopsonistic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopsony), thus artificially lowering people’s ability to pay for (and collectively negotiate for) medical care.

3. Repealing laws that shift healthcare funds from the 25%-devoured-by-overhead voluntary sector to the 75%-devoured-by-overhead coercive sector, thus decreasing the amount of healthcare that gets to needy recipients.

4. Repealing laws that transfer the power to make medical decisions for individuals from those individuals to centralized bodies, thus increasing the impact and scope of fatally bad decisions and suppressing the competitive signals that allow the identification of better and worse policies.

5. Repealing laws that wiped out the old mutual-insurance systems (basically HMO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMO)s run by the patients instead of by corporations) and empowered insurance companies at the expense of patients.

6. Repealing laws that suppress innovation and distribution in the pharmaceutical industry in the name of “intellectual property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property).”

Until the unlikely day when the Republican Party embraces this program, let’s hear no more of their favouring a free-market approach to health care.

I think of the term 'left-libertarian' as meaning anarchist, but I don't think you do, I know some of the colloquial terms in the US are rather different from the rest of the world. It seems to me that you are simply describing reform of a rotten structure when anarchism would seek to break that structure alltogether and base healthcare around such lofty things as prevention, need and universal accessability for the entire population. Corporations would cease to exist and healthcare would be run by the workers and the communities it serves, as would the pharma industry. Before any real positive change can be achieved in the chaotic US healthcare system it must have the profit motive eliminated from it like the disease it is. Then it can start to be a machine to fix and care for the population and not a proifit machine for what are really ruthless corporations with only one concern, ie, profit.

[Havet]

This is neither left nor libertarian. Around here (and in most of the world outside north america) 'libertarian' means stuff like the spanish revolution and is always left. The market worship you call 'libertarianism' has no significant presence outside north america, and even there is marginal off the internet. What you describe is right-liberal at best.

I'm sorry if you are against freedom of trade and equality of authority, abolition of the state and the capitalists and improvement of people's lives. Because that's what this imaginary proposal (which would never actually come into place, since left-libertarians do not advocate reformism) would accomplish.

[Havet]

I think of the term 'left-libertarian' as meaning anarchist, but I don't think you do, I know some of the colloquial terms in the US are rather different from the rest of the world. It seems to me that you are simply describing reform of a rotten structure when anarchism would seek to break that structure alltogether and base healthcare around such lofty things as prevention, need and universal accessability for the entire population. Corporations would cease to exist and healthcare would be run by the workers and the communities it serves, as would the pharma industry. Before any real positive change can be achieved in the chaotic US healthcare system it must have the profit motive eliminated from it like the disease it is. Then it can start to be a machine to fix and care for the population and not a proifit machine for what are really ruthless corporations with only one concern, ie, profit.

I'm sorry if I badly expressed myself. This is all an imaginary proposal. Left-libertarians would never advocate reformism (at least I've never seen one advocate it yet), so this is really just an attack of republicans and their shallow arguments rather than a coherent proposal.

But yes, I agree that left-libertarianism, and anarchism (aren't they the same?)

It "would seek to break that structure alltogether and base healthcare around such lofty things as prevention, need and universal accessability for the entire population." like you said, and "Corporations would cease to exist and healthcare would be run by the workers and the communities it serves, as would the pharma industry."

If you took close attention to the "proposal" it actually states some of that:

5. Repealing laws that wiped out the old mutual-insurance systems (basically HMO (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMO)s run by the patients instead of by corporations) and empowered insurance companies at the expense of patients.

WHen i write "REPEAL", its not actually to reform the system (that would be impossible!), but should be read as "DESTROY".

[leninwasarightwingnutcase]

I'm sorry if you are against freedom of trade and equality of authority, abolition of the state and the capitalists and improvement of people's lives. Because that's what this imaginary proposal (which would never actually come into place, since left-libertarians do not advocate reformism) would accomplish.You say nothing about how all the technical equipment used in healthcare (and the machinery used to produce it) would be owned - leading me to assume private property. Further, nothing which indicates how wage labour would be avoided. When you talk of 'repealing laws' this implies the continued existence of the state. Your proposal sounded like capitalism to me.

[Havet]

You say nothing about how all the technical equipment used in healthcare (and the machinery used to produce it) would be owned - leading me to assume private property. Further, nothing which indicates how wage labour would be avoided. When you talk of 'repealing laws' this implies the continued existence of the state. Your proposal sounded like capitalism to me.

Ok, I apologize for the misunderstanding. I am NOT advocating private property. I am NOT advocating reformism (therefore, the existence of a state), and certainly NOT capitalism.

Basically that which I favor is free-market anti-capitalism. It differs from current status quo and right-libertarian proposals in the following:

- A society where each person might possess a means of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production), either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market).[/URL]

- Proudhon's Mutualism supports [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative"]labor-owned cooperative firms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29#cite_note-0) and associations[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29#cite_note-7) for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism."

- This thread was merely a mocking of republican whining that you often see. When I mean "REPEAL", I actually mean "DESTROY", as in revolution.

- The free market anti-capitalism has as goals: freedom to trade, mutual aid and equality of authority. While the right-libertarian may be consistantly anti-state, they are not consistently opposed to the concentration of power. They may even fully endorse "private" concentrations of power and portray such organizations as victims of the state.

In short, the right-libertarian or cookie-cutter anarcho-capitalist, while they are likely fully aware and informed of the fact that we don't currently live in a free market or free society, functions as a "vulgar libertarian". What this means is that they function as apologists for big business, corporations and currently existing conditions or property titles. They use free market theories or analysis to legitimize conditions and organizations that came about in a non-free market. They tend to cling to a worldview in which "big business is America's most persecuted minority", as Ayn Rand once stated. They still tend to think of state intervention as somehow being inherently anti-business, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The right-libertarian is essentially pro-business more or less across the board without proper consideration for context. The left-libertarian calls them out on this.



The left-libertarian does not think that the results of a free market would mirror current economic conditions by any stretch of the imagination. Left-libertarians may tend to think that free competition would function as a check on the general size of economic organizations, and therefore draconian large businesses simply couldn't survive or exist. They are also highly tolerant of or more open to possible "socialistic" experiments within a free market, or advocate a significant increase in self-employment over standard wage-employment.