Re:Criticizing Google got me fired
by aptwebapps on Friday September 01, 2017 @04:19AM
(#15146955)
I'm not an expert on libertarianism, but I looked at the first results from that search and it seems like some libertarians support some form of single-payer but purely as a political compromise, which I assume is what you were referring to. It still doesn't jibe with the ideology, but they seem to think that certain forms of single-payer might be better than what exists now.
Yeah, pretty much. I used to be a libertarian and know a lot of people who are, and many regard it as a reasonable compromise and a strict upgrade over the nonsense we have now.
Not really. Advocates of any ideology can compromise their ideals pragmatically, but libertarians explicitly cannot countenance single-payer as an end state. The idea of a government-run monopoly on health care is directly contrary to libertarianism.
Which is what you see when you read posts from libertarians about single-payer. Single-payer as a compromise, and only if accompanied by such a radical deregulation of medicine that "single-payer" is really just an economic subsidy for consumers on a private marketplace. That's a coherent (if, to me, terrifying) plan, but it's not what mainstream policy thinkers mean by single-payer!
Again: I'm not saying a libertarian can't accept single-payer as a temporary compromise (even for very long definitions of "temporary"). But if you find single-payer attractive, you're an economic liberal.
https://www.google.com/search?q=libertarians+who+support+sin...