“If we are going to have social services–and clearly, we are–I think they should probably be classed, along with defense, as a true public good.” ~ Megan McArdle
Megan McArdle announces her support for government-run health care
Erik Kain is a blogger and freelance writer. Currently he serves as Editor-in-Chief of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen and writes a tech blog at Forbes. Visit his politics blog here. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The National Review, The Washington Examiner, and the now-defunct True/Slant. You can also contact him via email.
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If we say that people who don’t post pictures of their wedding dresses are evil, maybe we can get her to post a picture of herself in a wedding dress!
She sure is a poor water-carrier for “libertarianism”. In one week, she can be both heartless and self-contradictory.
I’m glad to see the Atlantic branching out from the usual New York-DC axis groupthink. Where else could a libertarian like McArdle, or a conservative like Andrew Sullivan, be published these days?
Errr, she’s referring to social work and not health care, right? She expressly says that one of the reasons for government-run social services is that it targets only one marginalized segment of the population and therefore private enterprise does not have much incentive to please the consumer. That’s not the case with private health care providers who (usually) provide care to a much wider swath of the population and so cost is not quite as primary a consideration.
I assume you’re being too clever for me.
I’m just messing around.
Ahhh, I’ve always had blind spots when it comes to facetiousness, sarcasm, and messing around. My apologies.
I think all of the nursing homes in my home town other than Monroe Community Hospital are run by philanthropies or commercial companies. I think I would be very skeptical that private facilities operating on a combination of private pay and re-imbursements via Medicaid and the purveyors of long-term care insurance provide worse care for the money than the Community Hospital. She also neglects that in these circumstances, the relatives of the inmate are commonly quite involved parties. You may retain a residual option in these circumstances (difficult to exercise, I think), to transfer grandma from one facility to another. What if all of the facilities are operated by the county government?
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