- Question
- Should healthcare be free?
- Position1 of 3›
- No, healthcare shouldn't be free
- Argument‹6 of 6
Free healthcare disincentivizes making good choices
Under a health system that is free at the point of use, there is no financial incentive to make good health choices. It runs the risk of people seeking out danger because they will be taken care of it anything goes wrong.
The argument
What does free healthcare entitle someone to have? Most people are under the assumption that it'll remove the costs of expensive appointments and surgeries. What free healthcare is supposed to do, when implemented, is move the healthcare system to be fully supported on government taxpayer dollars that any medical cost is little to nothing for at least 90% of people. Doctors and hospitals would have to supply care at the same costs, also eliminating the need for private insurance. Changing the healthcare system from private to only public destroys not only the incentive of medical practitioners to go beyond the bare minimum of what's required of them, but it also settles people into the belief of medical freedom they do not have. While the cost would be significantly lower, the speed at which you are seen and the benefits of the previous insurance would be lost. This would change the conditions of care a person receives and the speed at which it's given. Free healthcare would not absolve people of the consequences from the risks they take as some seem to believe.
Context
The individual has the responsibility to keep themselves healthy. One way of incentivizing good health choices is by making them pay for their healthcare. A free system provides no incentive for making good health choices.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Having a long and healthy life is an incentive in and of itself. There is no correlation between making good health choices and the cost of healthcare. The United States has some of the highest obesity rates on the planet, but it also has some of the highest healthcare costs. This clearly indicates that people do not consider the financial implications of bad dietary decisions when they are deciding what to eat. In truth, just bolstering peoples understanding of general health practices and how to take care of themselves than people can decrease the risks they run into in daily life. One of the problems people have is that they are unable to tell when they should go to the doctor. If these things are clarified to the general public, then there is no reason a healthy lifestyle with free healthcare can't be reached.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] The incentive the premise says is removed is not the operative one on the counter's account: a long and healthy life is itself the incentive, and it applies to patients regardless of who pays. [Rejecting P3] The claimed link between cost exposure and personal behaviour is not borne out — the counter observes that the United States combines some of the world's highest healthcare costs with some of its highest obesity rates, which suggests people do not weigh medical bills when making dietary decisions, and that the actual gap is knowledge, including knowing when to see a doctor, rather than price signals.