It is suspected that Obamacare’s failures will lead to demands for a single-payer healthcare system.

Brown University student Roja Garimella discusses what happens when the American legal system meets the world of “free healthcare”.

However, consider a different scenario in which people obtain services entirely free of charge and then proceed to sue the providers. The blurriness of the previous situation is turned into unmistakable unfairness. Take it as a moral issue or an economic one — either way, it is unfair to the provider of the service or product, who has to pick up the tab. How can they be expected (and oftentimes required) to provide free care and then be left vulnerable to career-ending lawsuits?

Hospitals can be sued by patients who they provide free care to — care paid for by money taken away from the hospital’s funds, the physicians’ pay, and staff’s salaries. It is one thing to consider a certain standard of health and health care to be a human right. Doctors pledge and follow the Hippocratic oath because they believe in providing care to and helping everyone in need. However, when physicians are constantly burdened by the increasing costs of medical malpractice insurance premiums and concerned about the next time- and money-consuming lawsuit around the corner, they are not able to provide the highest quality of care possible.

Protecting physicians from at least some types of frivolous lawsuits will increase the quality of care for everyone. Defensive medicine and the shortage of medical providers caused by the burden of medical “liability” is not doing any good for anyone, except perhaps greedy lawyers shamelessly taking advantage of the corrupt legal system. Defensive medicine not only limits the advancement of medical innovations but also prevents patients from getting the highest quality of care they deserve. Similarly, high liability costs for doctors transfer to the rising cost of medical care for average citizens who pay for their medical care.

If a consumer spends money on a good or service, expecting a standard of care or product, and it fails to meet that requirement, the power to sue for damages makes sense. However, when a service is required from providers and taken for free, it is no longer such a clear-cut moral issue. The effects of the resulting healthcare lawsuits on average Americans are unmistakably unfair. It is our society’s responsibility to consider the justness of our laws and the implications they carry.

We need to ask ourselves the hard moral questions: Is the direction that our current legal system is leading us good for society or just? If we don’t stop it now, where will it end?