Free healthcare for Pokemon is a moral hazard

Policy Brief

Humane Pokemon Welfare Institute

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Introduction

It is assumed that to be the very best like no one ever was, free, high-quality universal healthcare for Pokemon is a necessity. While this is utopian in principle, it poses a serious moral hazard with severe ethical complications.

How can this be?

When trainers can heal Pokemon at zero-cost instantly, they have no incentive to value the lives of Pokemon because all risk to their Pokemon is completely externalized.

The trainer never has to bear the consequences of their high-risk behaviour.

To address this issue, free healthcare should be replaced by a fragmented, byzantine multi-payer healthcare system with risk-adjusted pricing and high out-of-pocket costs.

Problem context and analysis

When trainers face no consequences for pushing their Pokemon till they “faint” (aka receive severe physical trauma e.g., burns, electrocution etc) but are instead rewarded financially or with social status, they are incentivised to maximise gain through excessive risk taking with the lives of their Pokemon.

What is less obvious but equally insidious are the second order effects of having free, accessible healthcare for Pokemons:

1. Free market innovation is stifled: there is no profit incentive for private companies like Silph Co. and Devon Corp. to invest in R&D and drive pharmaceutical innovation. Why would trainers spend Pokedollars on potions when healing is free?

2. Pokemon lives have no value: without assigning a price to each Pokemon’s life, free healthcare implies a Pokemon’s life has no value. This implication is fundamentally depraved, heinous and morally reprehensible. It removes any dignity from Pokemon and their entertaining blood sport

Showing that Pokemon lives, like those of humans, can be efficiently priced by the free market is a powerful, undeniable signal for Pokemon rights and equality.

Recommendation

Based on meta-analyses of the most successful healthcare systems around the world, we believe a fragmented, byzantine multi-payer healthcare system with risk-adjusted pricing and high out-of-pocket costs is the best model of success to implement.

By making healthcare for Pokemon expensive, inaccessible and conditional, we can encourage trainers to better value the lives of their sentient, captive fighting assets.

How would this work?

#1: Pokemon healing services will be priced according to the amount of healing needed, with multipliers for rarity and power level. To ensure that even the most worthless Pokemon’s life is valued, a floating price floor based on median healing prices of legendary Pokemons will be used. All Pokemon lives are equal.

Note: there will be no price ceiling on Pokemon healthcare because of the invisible hand, which has been shown to be present across all stages of capitalism, including late-stage capitalism.

#2: Trainers will be assigned a “risk-adjusted profile”, which will be used as an additional coefficient for healing prices. This will include but are not limited to: their win/loss ratio, the types of Pokemon they use and their battling style. Compiling a database of all trainers helps deter bad actors from taking advantage of the system.

#3: Multiple duplicative and redundant healthcare administrative providers will be added to maximise bureaucratic efficiency. This helps prevent any anti-competitive monopolies from forming, mitigating the risk of unaffordable healthcare from monopolistic pricing.

These changes do not make Pokemon healthcare less accessible or force a disproportionate financial burden on all but the highest net-worth trainers. This is in fact preventative care.

Prohibitively expensive healthcare does not price out the poor - it incentives holistic wellness that focuses on preventing problems before they even happen.

Closing

What is particularly exciting about this recommendation is that it is a true win-win solution. No compromise is made to the effectiveness of the healthcare provided; after all, value-based care is still the goal of any healthcare system.

However, by assigning a price to Pokemon healthcare, we sincerely affirm the value of each and every Pokemon. We wholeheartedly validate that Pokemon lives have market value, and help trainers avoid risky behaviours that are morally hazardous.

Replacing free, universal healthcare with an expensive, inaccessible alternative for Pokemon is a critical step toward meaningful legal Pokemon representation.