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Today's "Ask Dr. Ruwart"

What is the libertarian stand on universal health care?

Question: What do libertarians think about universal health care?

My Short Answer:

The way to make health care universal is to make it affordable. The way to make it affordable is to slash the excess regulations that cause prices to soar without protecting the consumer.

In 1962, for example, regulations were passed that tripled the development time of new drugs. These regulations haven't made drugs any safer. Most side effects seen in drugs for the past 50-75 years are ones that can't be predicted from animal studies or the small number of people exposed to the drug during clinical testing. Thus, these regulations kill about 100 times as many people as they save. In addition, they've driven drug prices up 700%. (For details, see: www.ruwart.com/AAPS.pdf)

"I conservatively estimate that we could slash 80-90% off our health care bill without such wasteful regulations. Almost everyone could then afford to pay for their medical care. The few who couldn't would be easily covered by private charity.

"If we keep excessive and expensive regulation in place and make the taxpayer foot the bill, we'll have to ration health care as other nations with universal health care do. In practice, this usually means that the elderly are denied care in favor of children and adults of working age. In Britain, for example, people over 55 years of age are often denied kidney dialysis. Thus, universal health care, as proposed by our politicians, is even less universal than the current bloated system in the U.S."

Dr. Mary Ruwart is a leading expert in libertarian communication and author of the international bestseller Healing Our World. She is also author of Short Answers to Tough Questions, in which you will find a collection of her answers.

Read more of Dr. Ruwart's Short Answers to Tough Libertarian Questions.

Dr. Ruwart's answers graciously provided by The Advocates for Self-Government.