The State Cannot Fix These Problems

Gene Veith mentions an article in the American Conservative by Patrick Deneen positing that the solution to the health and higher education crises we are facing cannot be fixed by the solutions proffered by Conservatives or Liberals.

The dominant voices in the debate in both areas—health and education—cleave closely to the contemporary party lines. On the Right, the case is made that a competitive market model will solve the ills of both health care and education. By allowing prices to be driven by supply and demand, and the motivations of the primary actors—doctors and professoriate, on the one hand, patients and students, on the other—to be largely self-interested, the market will resolve how best to allocate the relatively limited access to the best health care and the best institutions of higher education. On the Left, it is believed that the State should rest a heavy hand on the scales of the market, enforcing widespread access, suppressing costs (or providing subsidies), and forcing providers to conform to state-mandated expectations and standards.

Deneen goes on to state that any approach to these problems not rooted in charity as practiced by the Church is not viable, because the State does not and cannot operate in the area of human services.