Babies and Bathwater

Which to keep?

This report from CBC this week shows that free medication reduces health care costs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pharmacare-study-overall-health-savings-1.6855773

The savings are significant. A pilot study showed an overall savings to the healthcare system of about $1400 a year when medication was provided for free.
The issue is that when prescription costs are competing with food and shelter costs some people will choose to be warm and fed rather than do their meds.
Then they end up in hospital. Need I point out that a hospital stay is way more expensive than a course of medicines?

I don't think government will be giving out meds for free any time soon. The reason for that is that conservatives think that giving meds for free is morally wrong.

I think conservatives have a couple of reasons for this.
On the one hand they think that handouts like that make people dependent on government and they think that dependents are slaves who have to do whatever their benefactor demands.
So they present withholding medications that people require but can't afford is actually giving them a helping hand by forcing them to become self-sufficient.

On the other hand, they think that government _per se_ is bad. Their legislative agenda is basically making government small enough that it can be "drowned in a bathtub". They do want to be able to dictate to women - thou shalt not abort a fetus" and then try to set up a surveillance apparatus to enforce that but they don't want to push regulations on railroads that prevent disasters.

I'm sure that one thing that sticks in the conservative craw about free meds is that it's an attack on the free market that now provides us with overpriced meds.

A question that emerges here is; what is the purpose of government.
I think the purpose of government is to make sure that everyone in society has the capabilities they need to live a full life.
Conservatives seem to think that the purpose of government is to provide police and military to protect their riches.

What do you thnk?

Star I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life. I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it. Each week I write a short essay to set the topic. I show a selection of them here.

I've been thinking and reading about philosophy for a long time but I'm mostly self taught. That is I've had the good fortune to read what interests me rather than follow a course of study. That has it's limits of course but advantages. It doesn't cost as much and is fun too.

My interests are things like evolution and cognition and social issues and economics and science in general.