Hayek agrees with me on health care?

The First Things weblog quotes Friedrich Hayek on health care:

Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong… Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken, …

Now, Hayek was an unabashed opponent of all things socialist; his The Road to Serfdom is something of a bible of economic conservatism. Look it up if you don't believe me. So it surprises me that it sounds somewhat like what I was trying to say some time ago, although Hayek gets it much better.

The rest of the article is pretty good, too.


This is completely unrelated, but for some bizarre reason the reference to "Morning Zoo DJs" in that article reminded me of Mancow, the Chicago DJ I heard once or twice while in seminary. I might remember wrong but I believe I disliked the show because it contained a lot of vulgar humor. However, I had no car, so I had to ride to pastoral assignments with a fellow seminarian who did.* One of the seminarians I rode with was a huge, huge Mancow fan. He called it a guilty pleasure, but he was considerate enough to turn it off when I said that I really disliked it.

Believe it or not, the archdiocese of Chicago subsequently asked that seminarian to study in Rome. You'd think that this could explain a lot about the Chicago archdiocese, but I prefer the malin genie hypothesis: someone figured that packing him off to Rome was a surefire way to wean him off Mancow.

You think I'm making this up, don't you? But it's the unvarnished truth. Unless my memory deceives me, which it doesn't.

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*I couldn't afford the car I owned, so I let my parents drive it and make the payments. The car stayed in Virginia while I stayed in Chicago.