The Quality of Mercy: Social Health Insurance in the Charitable Liberal State

Abstract

This paper has two, mutually supportive purposes: (1) to show that the modern economic rationale for universal social health insurance is consistent with the classical liberal understanding of property rights; (2) to show that the writings of the leading liberal sages-Locke, Smith, Mill, and Hayek-are congenial to programs economically similar to universal social health insurance, and, in Hayek's cases, were specifically approving. It is hoped that these facts and reasonings, which are unlikely to be known in toto to those who do not normally study across the intersection of philosophy and economics, will encourage a dialogue that reasserts in a non-ideological way the neglected role of property rights in the health economic assessment of social health insurance alternatives.