THE MORAL HAZARD MYTH.

THE MORAL HAZARD MYTH. Repeating a frequent argument, a commenter to this thread says:

The structure of a universal care system should somehow promote and reward healthy living.How does one deter the freeloaders who take poor care of themselves and then overuse the system for years on end (as sort of mental health therapy)? "It will not happen" is a questionable response - it happens now.

Frankly, this gets us to one legitimate critique libertarians have of universal health care: it can be used to bootstrap lots more nanny statism. I can live with that given the net positives of having a better health care system, but it's regrettable.For this reason, however, it's worth noting that the argument is lousy, a subset of the utterly bizarre belief that medical care works according to similar incentives as markets for consumer goods.