Is private healthcare selfish?

If you want to avoid the ire of compassionate liberals, it's best not to bring up the virtues of private healthcare. If you do, you might be told that you're insensitive or selfish.

It goes without saying that most people prefer not to be in the callous self-centered camp, but many find themselves there anyway.

I'm not a Republican, but I'm often mistaken for one because I use words like choice, self-responsibility and competition in conversations about healthcare. Many are perceptive enough to know that I'm really something far more devious than a Republican: I'm a Libertarian.

To many, this means that I carry a gun, evade taxes and prefer free markets to human welfare. However, endorsing private healthcare does not mean that I go around remarking to uninsured cancer patients, "Walk it off."

The point is that there seems to be an endless flow of hyperbolic rhetoric against anything private. There is also the widespread assumption that the government, when in the right hands, can do everything better than the status quo. After all, look at Europe.

In Michael Moore's film Sicko, European countries seem to do everything better. In the United Kingdom, hospitals pay you for travel expenses; in France, doctors make midnight house calls and the government pays mothers for nannies. Even though Moore incessantly repeats that it's all free, we know they pay a heavy price for their healthcare.

But how heavy a price? I'm not about to deny that America needs to fix its own expensive healthcare problems, but Europe's system is not as immaculate as it's often made out to be.

The United Kingdom set a goal earlier this year to reduce maximum wait times for inpatient care to 18 weeks. Some even wait for more than a year. In 2006, 20,000 German doctors protested poor salaries, shutting down thousands of practices nationwide. France's system, while it provides excellent services, is facing a $15.6 billion deficit.

I should also mention that the vast majority of French citizens pay out-of-pocket fees like co-pays on top of taxes, and even pay for supplemental private insurance. Some might not even call this socialized medicine in the same way we might characterize the UK or Canada.

While France's midnight house calls and free nannies sound dandy, perhaps we should consider their true economic costs. If every person in America utilized a mobile healthcare service, can we imagine how many unnecessary visits the system would be forced to bear?

When we do not pay directly for our health problems [HTML_REMOVED] that is, when the government or insurance providers pay for them instead [HTML_REMOVED] cost is not a cardinal consideration in the use of health services. In other words, we waste money.

When I say we need more self-responsibility in healthcare, I do not mean that people should be held responsible for the diseases they might inherit. I mean that we should lower ballooning healthcare costs by focusing on necessary, not extraneous health services.

If you need further proof, the insurance I have covers massage therapy [HTML_REMOVED] even acupuncture. It's not because I or most other people need them; it's because the state of Washington actually mandates that insurance providers make them available.

Massage therapy sounds like one of those nice perks you might find in France, and just like in France, the government here is making healthcare more expensive by controlling the services provided.

I would suggest that maybe it's not self-centered or callous to want more self-responsibility and more choices in health care.

If we had to pay extra for nannies or mobile doctors in our insurance plans, most would probably choose not to pay for it. Perhaps it's even selfish to think that the government should provide services for some at the expense of others.

Of course, we shouldn't let these superficial issues distract us from more glaring problems. Employer-based insurance has indeed created a horrible mess in this country. I'm just pointing out that government intrusion into healthcare is often the source of, not the solution, to our problems.

[Reach contributing writer Reece Johnson at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]