I could not agree more with the first part of Professor Henry’s statement, but his conclusion is biased and completely anti-social. Economist and philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe made similar comments about the Social Security system. For Hoppe, subsidies for sickness or disability lead to more sickness and pain, discourage work, individual effort and solidarity and foster a hedonistic society whose members’ main goal is to live off of everyone else.  

 

Is Hoppe right? One of the economy ministers under Felipe Gonzalez took a similar position: the number of sick and disable people in Spain could only be credible in the wake of a natural disaster or civil war. Without doubt, this is an exaggeration, but there is a bit of truth in there. Those countries with the highest levels of medical protection have the greatest number of sick and disable people. For example, according to the Spanish Committee of Disabled People (CERMI) approximately 10 percent of Spaniards suffer some kind of disability, while in countries like Finland with more overwhelming governments, 23 percent of the population is disabled in some way. In other words, two out every 10 Finns are disabled. That is not believable. Is this the fault of pharmaceutical marketing departments? If the state subsidizes sickness, it is inevitable that, statistically speaking, more people take sick.

 

What Professor Henry is claiming is that everyone is an idiot except him. This is why we succumb to the pharmaceutical companies, giving in to their sirien song and buying whatever they advertise. But all commercial transactions are voluntary. You buy what you want and no one has a moral right to call you stupid, as Henry does, with the aim of becoming master of our freedom and our money. Professor Henry’s statement is true, but only in reference to the European interventionist and totalitarian health care system. In the real world, individuals know better than anyone what is good for them without needing some technocrat in a distant office to impose it.       

 

Faced with such absolutist attitudes, a few organizations have already launched efforts to defend the consumer. The Instituto Juan de Mariana will soon publish a brief report on the freedom of medicinal information. Upon reading the report, it might be surprising to learn what politicians plan on doing to our lives and freedom.  

 

If we really want fake illnesses to disappear, we will have to seriously consider eliminating not pharmaceutical companies advertisements (whose products you buy if you want to), but the state intervention that fosters an irresponsible attitude and allows some to live at the expense of other, even when perfectly healthy.