Moral Problems

In the midst of the Clinton administration's efforts to reform health care, Senator Dole claimed that there was no crisis in health care and that all that was needed is some “fine tuning.” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that on “health care costs, you've got a crisis,” but claimed there was no other major problem. Both those assessments were woefully inadequate to the problems we faced then and would be even more inadequate now.

Hume is arguing that no rational objective observer, seeing the world with fresh eyes, could reasonably infer from what is perceived in this world that it was designed by an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful being.

Similarly, were a stranger to drop into this world and look at our health care system, he or she would be hard-pressed to know what to infer from what is perceived. If someone were to suggest that it were designed, such a stranger should be puzzled: What is it designed for? Is it meant to provide health care to the citizens of the country? But then why are so many excluded from basic care? Is it meant to ensure that those who are born survive? Then why is the infant mortality rate so much higher than the rates of other industrialized countries? Is it meant to make the lives of those who are covered healthier so that they have less need for medical intervention? But then why are so many of the resources of the system directed toward relief from suffering rather than prevention, and why is so much spent so late in one's life? “You have so much money to spend on health care,” this stranger would say, “but if your aim is prevention, why is almost a third of the money spent on a person's health spent in the last year of the person's life?