Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

by Timothy Snyder

We should regard health care as a right, take medical and local knowledge seriously, make time for young children, and put doctors in charge. The realization of these lessons will cost some money now—and save far, far more in the years to come. The question is not how much this would cost. The question is how enormous the gains would be. Robust public health lowers medical costs and reduces the risk of pandemics that destroy the economy. Investing in childhood means less mental and physical illness down the road, less prison time, fewer broken lives. It means more wealth for those who retire. Most of the insurance industry simply collects rents from disease, like trolls on a bridge demanding a toll. The trolls’ profits misleadingly count in gross national product, though they are supplying no good and performing no service. Economic logic says that the middleman should be removed when possible, and we know how it is possible in this case: with a single-payer system at the center of things, and private insurance at the margins. Countries where people live longer have shown that this works. Thousands of doctors have made the case for it. If we all cross the bridge to health together, the trolls cannot stop us. A market economy such as ours works better when people are cared for. If it is liberty that we want, then we do not sacrifice human freedom to market dogma, but rather make markets work for freedom. The most influential of the market economists, Friedrich Hayek, oppose...