The effects of physicians giving free care:
For more than half a century now US health professionals have sought to operate, for the nation’s ever growing number of poor and uninsured citizens, an informal health insurance system by providing care to them without being compensated. …
Why, it may be asked, can such private benevolence add up not to the public good but to the public bad? The answer is that this benevolence gives undue moral cover to politicians who shirk their duty.
