Bill Mitchell — A government can always afford high-quality health care provision

Must-read on the abysmal state of the American health care system. Disseminate widely.

The only way that these sorts of debates will progress, however, is to take them out of the fiscal policy realm where they are largely inapplicable and start talking about rights and what different interpretations of these rights concepts have for real resources allocations and redistributions.

Whether a nation can afford first-class health care depends only on the real resources that are available to it for that purpose.

If all available real resources are being fully utilised then to expand their use in one area requires another area(s) give up its (their) claim on those resources.

In US politics, affordability of health care provision is only one side of the coin. The other side is the highly contentious "right versus privilege" issue.

Liberals and progressives generally hold that access to quality healthcare is a right whereas conservatives generally hold that health care is a privilege, although many conservatives would agree that all should have access to emergency treatment. Many conservatives argue that access to emergency rooms, which only treat acute conditions, is sufficient provision.

The abysmal state of health care in the US is a cultural outcome of a highly individualistic framework and a political plutonomy.

On the other hand, polling shows that the public is in favor of universal access to quality health care through something like Medicare for all.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
A government can always afford high-quality health care provision
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia