“We have to do something about health care.”

The scariest word in that sentence is not something. It’s we.

The first-person plural form is not merely a convenience, as in “We’re in for a cold winter.” It indicates that decisions about “the healthcare system” should be made collectively, with one decision binding everyone.

That’s collectivism.

So why is virtually everyone a collectivist when it comes to health care? I do not exaggerate. Every prominent participant in the current debate over how to “reform” the medical industry approaches the issue in collectivist terms. They have differences at the margin–tax increases versus tax credits, a government-run “public option” versus subsidized nonprofit cooperatives–but there is no disagreement that “we” must have a policy.

But why must we do anything about health care? Why can’t you do what you want, I do what I want, and he and she do what they want? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in a free society? Reformers would say that costs are rising too much and some people can’t afford insurance. But that is no answer. It tells us only that possibly ameliorable conditions exist, not that collectivism is a good approach.

When we see problems in other important markets, most of us don’t expect televised presidential town-hall meetings, congressional committees, and omnibus legislation to give us the answer. We individually adjust our behavior in the marketplace and anticipate that entrepreneurs will cater to us. Solutions, with inevitable tradeoffs, are micro, marginal, and tailored to individual needs, not macro, holistic, and procrustean. Out of this arises an orderly marketplace–without a conscious overall plan. No one has found a better way to make masses of people better off.

Why is health care different? Must we collectively reinvent the industry? The social knowledge problem that F. A. Hayek spelled out should make us wary of any collective response.

The reformers’ stock answer is that this is something only we, acting through the “democratic process,” can handle. That’s an assertion. Where’s the proof? What if earlier collectivist decisions gave us rising medical and insurance costs?

In fact they did. Nearly every aspect of medicine and health insurance that the politicians say needs fixing is the result of “our”–that is, politicians’–previous attempts to fix something. Much of the escalation of prices comes from consumer demand freed from normal cost constraints thanks to third-party payers: government-privileged insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid. While that intervention boosts demand by eliminating cost consciousness, others constrict supply: occupational licensing, insurance mandates and barriers to entry, patents on drugs and devices, FDA regulations, certificate-of-need requirements, and more.

So let’s hear no more about what we–collectively and coercively–must do about health care. If government would get out of the way, we–individually and cooperatively–will figure out what to do. Collectivism and government planning trample freedom and foster social stupidity. Individualism and free markets respect each person’s dignity and liberty while getting the most out of the “wisdom of crowds” in the marketplace.

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Why did it take a major recession to get politicians thinking about fixing the roads and bridges? Because there is glory in starting big flashy projects, but none in maintaining them. Jim Powell documents this truth.

The debate raging over the legitimacy of intellectual property rights is about more than rock bands trying to stop kids from swapping MP3 files over the Internet. It’s about whether people are free to use their human capital to compete with entrenched dinosaur corporations looking to the State for protection. Kevin Carson assesses what’s at stake.

In the future, when government retrenches and the market is finally free, people will obtain their medical care differently from how they do now. Ross Levatter speculates on how things might look.

Political leaders are always haranguing us to volunteer in our communities. So why do they make it so darn difficult? James Payne describes the mess that awaits would-be volunteers.

In every era do-gooders condemn the consumer-credit trap and propose ways to shield supposed victims from predatory lenders. It’s happening again now with credit cards. Todd Zywicki summarizes the history of consumer credit in America and the harm done by protecting people from themselves.

Curaçao was once a popular offshore financial center. Now it’s not. Andrew Morriss explains the lessons to be learned from its rise and fall.

Here’s what our columnists have brewed up this month: Lawrence Reed commemorates Poland’s break from the Soviet bloc. Donald Boudreaux contemplates working for a state-run university. Thomas Szasz recounts the psychiatric attempt to deny General Edwin Walker a criminal trial. Stephen Davies shows that true heroes are not politicians and generals. John Stossel finds healthcare reformers arrogant. David Henderson defines privilege. And Peter Lewin, contemplating the argument that free-market advocates should welcome financial regulation, protests, “It Just Ain’t So!”

Books undergoing dissection deal with slave emancipation, the current financial turmoil, the essays of a great economist, and media freedom.

–Sheldon Richman

srichman@fee.org