Rationing Insulin and Egalitarianism

The time to ration health care is AFTER, not before, billionaires have had their wealth taken away from them

Read the full article here.

Does Health Care Need to Be Rationed?

A society at a given time can only produce so much. Therefore, by one means or another, we have to ration the economic wealth we produce, by deciding (in either a good or a bad—as today—manner) how much health care we will provide versus how much education we will provide, or housing or food or military weapons or entertainment or luxury yachts or private jets or multiple mansions for a single family, etc., etc. None of these kinds of things can be produced without limit.

Because of these finite limits, we often hear it said—truthfully!—that health care must be rationed. Typically this is said, however, to justify the have-nots having to make do with less health care than they need to live well while the rich have all they want. It is said by pundits and CEOs and so forth who are loath to challenge, or even mention, today’s unjust class inequality: the fact that a few are obscenely rich while the many are have-nots; the fact that, for example, the way insulin is rationed today is by telling have-nots they can’t have what they need while telling the rich they can buy all they want.

Good people who want the have-nots to get the health care they ought to get sometimes reply to the “we’ve got to ration health care” pundits and CEOs by saying, “No! We should NOT ration health care.” But this is a weak and unpersuasive argument, because, as discussed above, we do have to ration health care; it can never be in infinite supply.

The Question is Not WHETHER to Ration Health Care, but WHEN

Here’s the persuasive argument against these obnoxious pundits and CEOs:

Yes, of course we need to ration health care. The question is not whether to ration health care, but when. WHEN is the time to tell somebody, “We’re sorry we cannot provide you the medicine or care you need to live as well as you would like. It’s because we need to ration health care so we have resources sufficient to provide for other important things such as housing and education and food”?

The time to tell somebody this unwelcome news about how they will have to make do without some health care is AFTER, not before, we have taken away from the billionaires their unjustly hogged wealth—their luxury jets and yachts, their teams of personal servants (fitness trainers, chefs, etc.), their (yes “their” because they don’t serve the have-nots!) armies and weapons factories whose purpose is to keep them rich at the expense of the suffering of the have-nots, their multiple mansions, and so forth—so they are no richer than anybody else.

The time to tell somebody this unwelcome news about having to forego some health care is AFTER, not before, there are no rich and no poor. It is AFTER the people who value no-rich-and-no-poor equality and mutual aid and fairness (i.e., the vast majority of people, whom I call egalitarians) are the ones with the real say in society and in particular the real say about HOW to ration social wealth.

The time to tell somebody this unwelcome news about the need to ration health care is AFTER our economy is operating on the egalitarian principle of “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.” Read about this kind of economy here.

Only THEN is it the right time to tell somebody they have to get less health care than they might reasonably want. Until then, there is no excuse for denying the have-nots all the health care they reasonably want for free.

This is the egalitarian revolutionary argument. This is the argument that elicits an extremely positive response from the vast majority of people.

How can we get the kind of society we ought to have, a society in which health care would be rationed the way it ought to be? Read what I propose here.