Conservative public policy is often attacked because it fails to “fix” human nature. But liberal public policy usually fails because it ignores human nature. A conversation I had at a business law conference I attended two weeks ago drove this point home to me anew.

Having served on a well-attended panel entitled “Conservatism in Academe,” early on in the conference, I was fair game for anyone wanting to challenge conservative principles and policies. Later in the week, a colleague chatting with me over cocktails tried to defend single-payer health care. “I believe in having a civil society,” she explained pleasantly, “and in a civil society, I think health care should be a ‘public good.’”

Saying that health care is a “public good” sounds wonderful – the kind of statement with which no intelligent and compassionate person could disagree. But, as with so many blanket statements made by liberals, it does not hold up under scrutiny, and in fact the infrastructure necessary to deliver on such an apparently compassionate policy inevitably results in disappointment, failure, and – if the latter is not acknowledged – oppression by the very government it was hoped would be the solution to all human ills. Why is this so? Three basic reasons, all inarguable:

1. No one “owns” another human being’s work.

A “public good” ought to be something that everyone needs access to, but no one should own, like air or water. Although human beings might unlawfully pollute or otherwise make these public goods unavailable or unusable for their fellow creatures, humans did not create nor do they own these things, which preexisted us.

Unlike air or water, “health care” does not exist in the absence of another human being’s endeavors. If someone decides to be a nurse, a pediatrician, an oncologist, or a neurosurgeon, he will spend (or borrow) the money, and devote months and years of study to acquire the necessary expertise. Someone else could get an engineering degree and invent a new stent, an MRI technology, a CT scan machine, or ultrasound. Still another could pursue her education in chemistry, and develop a compound that eventually becomes drug therapy for cancer, autism, diabetes, hypertension, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Groups of people get together, raise the necessary funds, and build offices, clinics, and hospitals. Multiply this activity by hundreds of thousands of people over decades, and you have a health care “system.” (Although even the term “system” is a misnomer here, since there is no single unifying power behind the development or delivery of the care). But none of these goods or services would exist without human beings’ creating, building, or deciding to deliver them.

To say that “health care” is a “public good” is to say that everyone has an equal right to these people’s time, their efforts, their energy; the services they choose to deliver, or the things they have devoted their lives’ work to developing. The unfairness of this assessment and the impossibility of its implementation is surely obvious: none of us “owns” anyone else’s time or creativity, and none of us have the right to demand free access to it. To claim otherwise is a form of indentured servitude. A free society depends upon free exchange: we request goods or services that another provides, and we must offer something that person views as having equal value. Which brings us to the second point.

2. If people think it is “free,” they will demand more of it than can be provided.

Characterizing health care as a “public good” is another way of saying that demand for it is potentially unlimited. This exposes the single largest flaw in the single-payer plans. Single-payer advocates like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank ignore human nature, and then hide behind their intentions when human nature rears its head: “We don’t have any intention of ‘rationing’ health care,” they claim. OK, let’s assume they don’t. But it won’t be their “intentions” that cause it to be rationed; it will be the fact that everyone will want more of it than they can have, because they have been told that it is their “right,” and that it is “free.” Continued...