In a short article for the Reason Foundation, I distinguish between the economic approach to public health and the contemporary “public health” movement, which is a political movement. Two short excerpts:
Traditionally, public health deals with a general class of public goods related to the prevention and control of health events that are in everybody’s interest to prevent or control but that no private producer will organize because of the free-rider problem. An epidemic—the rapid spread of a contagious disease—is the paradigmatic case.
The public health movement, as it developed over the last century or two, is very different:
The public health movement, however, is generally suspicious of individual preferences and individual choices. It is openly opposed to the primacy of individual choices. Its ideology favors collective choices, that is, decisions made by the apparatus of government.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Brady
Apr 12 2020 at 4:07pm
Pierre writes (for the Reason Foundation) that “Traditionally, public health deals with a general class of public goods related to the prevention and control of health events that are in everybody’s interest to prevent or control but that no private producer will organize because of the free-rider problem. An epidemic—the rapid spread of a contagious disease—is the paradigmatic case.”
I’ve highlighted what strikes me as a pretty dogmatic statement. Is that always true? That “no private producer will organize because of the free-rider problem”? If we rewrite that as “no non-state actor will organize because of the free-rider problem,” it is clearly not the case. “Private producer” suggests a for-profit producer, but most (all?) of us some (most?) of the time engage in activities that, whether or not they involve market activity, are not undertaken to make a monetary profit.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 12 2020 at 5:19pm
Thanks for pointing that out. This statement was meant to explain standard economic theory. I agree that it has to be qualified in many ways, including by bringing in private charity.
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