Man Bites Blog

Will Wilkinson writes:

That some are able to afford, say, a treatment with very expensive new technology that significantly increases (how much is that?) their chances to survive a devastating cancer compared to the chances of those who cannot afford it does not seem to me unjust, flatly or otherwise. It seems a trivial consequence of the fact that new technology is often much more expensive than older technology

Empahsis mine.

OK — I get that what Will means is that if you have expesnive new technology, it will be distributed somewhat unequally, and that this is not an injustice so much as the intrinsic nature of expensive goods.

Nevertheless, to a person denied treatment, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that WW considers her suffering and perhaps ultimate death as a trivial concern compared to preserving ideological purity of keeping the government out of medicine.

I know that this isn’t how WW feels, and that he beleives that a universal health system will cost more than it saves. The problem is that the people it saves have names and stories that go with them today, whereas the people who might suffer as a result have much less interesting stories.

And thus is the nature of many libertarian arguments, which is why it will be hard for them to gain traction.

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