“There is No Incentive to Wellness”

Jonathan Chait picks up on Rudy's laissez-faire economics:

Giuliani… is not indifferent to the plight of the uninsured. He actually seems to revel in it:

 

I don't like mandating health care. I don't like it because it erodes what makes health care work in this country–the free market, the profit motive. A mandate takes choice away from people. We've got to let people make choices. We've got to let them take the risk–do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because, ultimately, if they don't, well, then, they may not be taken care of.

Where does this bizarrely punitive view of the health care system come from? It apparently arises from Giuliani's experience with welfare reform, which he constantly likens to health care. "You don't start off by promising you're going to insure everybody," he warned earlier this year. "It's the same mistake the Democrats made with welfare." So providing health coverage to the uninsured will make them irresponsible.

[…]

Giuliani also thinks that insulating people from the costs of sickness or injury will make them more likely to get sick or injured. "There is no incentive to wellness," he complains. 

Very true. Not only can't we help those who can't help themselves, but they just want to get the fucker over with already and die of some wasting disease.