Bad Analogy 2

“In a world of scarce resources, a slightly higher mortality rate is an acceptable price to pay for certain goals — including more cash for other programs, such as those that help the poor; less government coercion and more individual liberty; more health-care choice for consumers, allowing them to find plans that better fit their needs; more money for taxpayers to spend themselves; and less federal health-care spending. This opinion is not immoral. Such choices are inevitable. They are made all the time.

Consider, for example, speed limits. By allowing people to drive their cars at speeds at which collisions result in death, our government has decided that the socially optimal number of traffic fatalities is not zero. Some poor souls die: There were more than 30,000 traffic fatalities on America’s roads in 2013. If we didn’t accept that risk, we’d lower the speed limit to a rate at which accidents simply don’t kill, such as 10 mph. Instead, we’ve raised it periodically over the years, and you can now go as fast as 85 mph on a few highways.” Michael Strain 1/23/15

The author admits that repealing Obamacare would cost life but argues that it would be worth it because repealing Obamacare would bring a wealth of good. In order to argue this, the author draws an analogy between the health care system and the highway system. Just like the highway system allows a certain number of deaths to occur in order to run efficiently, so should the health care system.

One problem with this analogy is that in the case of the highway system everyone can agree what the central purpose of it should be—to run efficiently—and that this purpose by its nature will mean that a certain number of people will die. But what is the central purpose of a health care system if it is not to prevent the maximum numbers of unnecessary deaths. And how is that going to be achieved by allowing more deaths? So the first disanalogy is that in the case of the highway system the central good is being maximized and in the case of the health care system the central good is not being maximized.

 A second disanalogy is that the health care system that allows more death is said to be better because it has cash for other programs, less government coercion, less federal health care spending. But all of these were existent before Obamacere. So if the system that has these things is supposed to be better, why are Republicans not claiming just to repeal Obamacare but to repeal and replace? There is an admission that the previous system was worse than what we have now. But if this is the case, then the system that allows more death is not in fact better than the one that allows fewer deaths--by their own admission.

Finally, the author says that the new health care system that will replace Obamacare will have all these great features. But of course, the Republicans have never said what that new plan will look like. So it is hard to see how a fictional plan can really be an improvement over what we have now.