Subjectivism in the healthcare debate

[happiness]

I'm writing a blog post about a particular type of argument that I see frequently in favor of socialized medicine. It goes like this: we in the U.S. should determine our course on healthcare policy by looking around the world at what other countries are doing and imitate whichever other country's policy "works" the best. And since the policy that clearly "works" the best is single-payer, the U.S. should adopt that.

Off the top of my head, the problems with this are:

1) Nobody ever clarifies what the term "work" means, i.e. by what standard they judge the success or failure of a policy. They bypass the philosophical question of what ends should be chosen and proceed to cherry-pick statistics that appear to reflect favorably on single-payer while ignoring and whitewashing the inadequacies found in all countries that have it.

2) The method of comparing one country to another under the status quo is wrong because there is no objective benchmark against which to measure whether single-payer or any other given policy really does "work." There may be an ideal policy that all countries fall deplorably short of, in which case the comparison is between one failed policy and another.

Although I can't put my finger on why, I sense that these are actually two different ways of saying the same thing. Can anyone tell me the connection between them?

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2015 by happiness

[happiness]

Is it a false cause fallacy since the statistics used in this case do not control for the degree of government control? This is aside from the fact that eftists often use the U.S. as a proxy for the "free market," which is a factual error that one has to take on separately.

Edited December 21, 2015 by happiness

[William O]

The argument you are referring to is an application of the philosophy of pragmatism. Pragmatism has been the dominant philosophy in the United States since the Civil War, so people often appeal to it without even realizing that they are taking a philosophical point of view.

Pragmatism as developed by William James says that there are no absolute principles. We believe in the absolutes we do on the basis of our passional nature, which is irrational and inclines us to choose the premises that we do without our realizing it. This is pragmatism's explanation for why there have been so many different philosophies.

This is why people feel like they can use the term "works" without explaining it, although they may never have heard of William James. The term "works" comes from our passional nature, which there is no point in elaborating further. This is also why they feel like they can defend their views on health care without applying an objective benchmark.

A particular person who uses this argument might not realizing that he is appealing to pragmatism, so you might be able to persuade him to change his mind by pointing out that he needs a more principled approach. However, if someone is a committed pragmatist, it is very difficult to argue with him successfully, because they are so concrete bound.