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What Huck should have said
November 17th, 2010 Posted in Policy and PoliticsWatched Mike Huckabee on Bill Maher’s show, and he held his own, except for one critical error and one missed opportunity. The error was to apply to his host Maher’s maddening misnomer: libertarian. Bill Maher is about as libertarian as I am a Swedish bikini model.
The missed opportunity came when Maher asked Huckabee how a Christian can consider it right for people to profit from illness, via our private health-care system. Huckabee objected to the characterization, and talked about ways government can help the sick. That’s all well and good depending on one’s policy preferences, I suppose, but I wish he had said something like this:
As a Christian, I recognize that man is a fallen, selfish being. If he were angelic, we would need no police, no laws, no government. But you and I know, though you are an atheist and I a Christ-follower, that mankind is reliably, unshakably self-interested. He cares more about himself, and perhaps his family and friends, than he does complete strangers.
How then will you compel him to set aside resources for the sick, or study medicine, or invent new technology to cure their diseases? Exhortations on billboards? Compulsory medical school? Technology labs run by the same people who give us the Post Office, and TSA?
The reality is this: there is no system of economic organization that produces more valuable discoveries, and greater advances in health and prosperity, than a free market. Embracing the historically failed economic policies that you prefer will only hurt people in the long run, by diminishing their prosperity, their dignity, and ultimately their health. And that is decidedly unChristian.
on 
Oh that’s opening a can of worms but my comment is this. I’m all for free market but not in healthcare for exactly the reasons you cited. Man is selfish and that’s how a free market flies but selfishness does not work in healthcare. You Americans have to acknowlege that your system could be much better and much less costly. There are many public with private systems elsewhere in the world that are providing as good or better healthcare at a much lower cost to both the citizen and the government. Please ignore the commercials down there that play on unfounded fears. Public healthcare is not scary. I promise. Our family of 6 pays under a $1000/yr for health coverage. And we get to see our doctor whenever we need to. No one is dying in emergeny hallways and if you need surgery you get it. We may wait longer for elective surgeries but then we can always pay for private if we want. I don’t think I’ve ever been as frustrated with an issue as this one and so I rant….You have the most expensive and least efficient system in the world! Please change it quickly cause your economy cannot sustain it.
Woodlief for president!
Ruth, in what country do you live?
To answer Mark–
The People’s Republic of Canada.
Hey you remember this summer in Starbucks when I said that we need people like you in the middle of political discourse?
You are have whit that is calm and bitting and without the bitter after taste of Ann Coulter and Rush.
Woodlief, Woodlief, Wood….
Tony, you seem to have conflated the provision of healthcare services (doctors, hospitals, hospices etc), with research into medical technologies and pharmacology. It’s perhaps defensible to push for free market research (while conveniently overlooking the vast sums that governments invest alongside such research). However, there is no evidence whatsoever that Americans as a whole today enjoy anywhere near the affordable quality healthcare that our cousins in Canada, UK, Australia, Germany etc etc currently enjoy. Our “free market” system is broken. It is neither “free market” nor affordable, since it’s rife with monopolies or duopolies in major markets, and completely out of reach for those with pre-existing conditions and/or earning minimum wage.