Gabriel E. Vidal

Caritas in Veritate represents a lost opportunity to continue to develop the classical-liberal ideas contained in Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Carita Est, in his previous writings on Christianity as a philosophy of creative freedom, and in John Paul II’s treatment of Catholic Social Doctrine in Centesimus Annus.

Obama’s ideas on payment reform to change how Medicare pays providers, and knowledge reform to investigate which treatments are most cost effective will never work and will increase costs and reduce quality.

Everyone seems to agree that the US needs a health czar. But without the bearings of economic calculation — that is, without pricing signals derived in a free market — all patients, hospitals, physicians, and producers of healthcare services (and the health czar himself) are left, to paraphrase Mises, groping in the dark.