Ep 101: What is health and can public health exist?

The Mindcrime Liberty Show discusses health, or more precisely the incoherent and tyrannical concept known as “public” health.  If by public one means the state, the current state has no interest in health and flourishing outside of some narrow do gooder definition. One needn’t go full conspiracy to recognize this fact, rather, the state doesn’t have the right incentives to care for individuals, let alone the general public. De facto state subsidized and regulated monopoly megacorporations aren’t worthy of trust either. 

Health itself is a disputed term, and the tradeoffs which go into what is and isn’t healthy have changed over time. What defines a healthy individual let alone a healthy public isn’t entirely clear and the bureaucratic state has no right in answering that question. The health industry, centered in the modern hospital, has a mediocre track record to put it generously since the start of the industrial revolution. 

There are certain areas which have had breakthrough treatments but the phenomena of iatrogenics (harm done by the healer) cannot be understated. State run or regulated hospitals themselves, much like public schools or prison, are a dreary prison-like building which can cost the individual or society a fortune while only adding a few years at high “human” quality of life cost. 
Many treatments administered by the healthcare industry may ultimately be not worth the added misery which ignores the financial/opportunity cost to a given procedure. 

Furthermore, the public health industry ends up treating all patients as being homogenous forgetting how much heterogeneity exists within humans. Whether the American “model” or single payer is “better” is a good question; however, neither seems particularly desirable overall. 
Both models are highly state centered. The state itself and the highly regulated “market” have in the narrow and wide sense promoted and implemented policies which are contra health. Numerous examples exist and one of the best is the FDA pyramid guidelines which are now recognized as promoting obesity and diabetes. Requiring young children to sit all day and even medicating boys is surely not healthy. Promoting two working parents as an ideal clearly means the quality of food eaten is less than ideal. 

The very fact that many societies are aging, or even in decline, one has to ask…is this a healthy population? To paraphrase Murray Rothbard, anytime someone mentions public health one should keep a keen eye on your wallet and your own health, because it's about to be wrecked.