CST and Health Care

I’ve been guesting at PrawfsBlawg this month and, inspired by a paper that I am in the process of completing about subsidiarity and the response to the economic crisis, have posted about the importance of encouraging decentralization in decision making, including in health care reform.

Writing at Mirror of Justice, Rob Vischer responds, arguing that health care is different, perhaps falling into that category – identified by John Paul II in Centesimus Annus – of the “needs and common goods that cannot be satisfied by the market system.”

I am in partical agreement. There is nothing about health care that, in and of itself, frustrates the operation of markets. It is not a natural monopoly and there are no intrinsic externalities or “tragedies” of the commons.

The problem, it seems to me, is that health care is like food. There are many goods that people can do without, but some are necessary for survival. We are reluctant to allow people to starve and we don’t want to simply allow those who get sick to die.

This does, I think, require public and private intervention in the market. My suggestion is that considerations of subsidiarity suggest that increases in subsidies may be preferable to increases in centralized control of the provision of services.

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A Good Crisis and an Opportunity: The Lessons of Catholic Social Teaching

In conjunction with some papers that I am completing, I have been thinking a lot about the Catholic notion of subsidiarity and what how it may inform our thinking about proposed expansions of the state in response to various “crises,” e.g., the financial seizure, global warming and perceived flaws in the delivery of health care.

Subsidiarity tells us that a “higher order” of authority should not do what individuals or a “lesser order” can do for themselves. Thus, the argument might proceed, the federal government should not do what a state goverment could do. Government should not do what voluntary mediating institutions can do.

Conservatives often advance subsidiarity as a justification for limited government and it often is. But it’s not that simple either. 

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Law School and the Hero’s Journey

129202-004-13CDB5F1Most law school professors are conflicted about their own experiences as law students.  We remember law school as an exceedingly unpleasant place, filled with crushing amounts of work and a hostile professoriate.  It is not surprising that law school is often depicted as a de-humanizing experience in the media, whether in books like Scott Turow’s One L or in movies such as The Paper Chase.  This recent post, by Professor Mazzie, seems to reflect a pervasive concern that the demands of law school can even erode our own sense of identity, a process that ultimately transforms students into soul-less apparatchiks of the legal system.  I, myself, have felt this way at times.

Some law professors (and I do not intend to include my colleagues in this group) respond to these conflicted feelings by endeavoring to reduce the stress of law school.  They reject the Socratic method as unnecessarily antagonistic and outdated.  They reduce the workload, and their expectations of the students, in order to leave more room in the students’ lives for the “real world.”  They may even take a rather forgiving view of the grading process.  Their intention is to make the current generation of law students happier during their law school experience than these professors remember being during their own.

The odd thing is that, when law students are provided with this de-stressed version of law school, I have found them to be even less satisfied with their law school experience.  Law students come to law school expecting to be challenged.  They want to have their abilities tested, and even found wanting on occasion.  In some sense, when students find the law school experience to be too easy, the law school experience loses meaning for them.

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