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How Many Libertarians Does It Take To Fix The Health Care System?, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

The libertarian prescription for health care reform is a admixture of deregulation and purportedly utilitarian calculation of social benefits and costs. In Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Right to Health Care?, Richard Epstein's offers a stark roadmap that embraces an unfettered free market for health care services, indigent care left primarily to the charitable impulses of providers and no cross subsidies between classes, generations or other categories of citizens (including the sick and healthy). This review essay argues that the history, economics, and politics of health markets belie Epstein's abstract reasoning. Though much of the argument in Mortal Peril is written …