The outrage that some people feel at the prospect of the government mandating healthcare coverage for everybody surprises and baffles me. I cannot imagine that anybody would want medical treatment to exist that could significantly extend the length or substantially improve the quality of their life and not be able to access that care because of an inability to pay for it. Denial of treatment in such cases would provide (and has done in the past) great fodder for the news media. Such life altering treatment can often cost several hundred thousand dollars. Few Americans have the financial assets or earning power to pay such a bill personally. Yet refusing to carry healthcare coverage unfairly saddles those who do have coverage with the unpaid, unfunded bills from such individuals.
I do not want to live in a society that only provides healthcare to those who can afford to pay for it. Insisting that everybody have some form of healthcare coverage attempts to distribute the cost of medical care equitably. People rightly argue about how to achieve that goal, debating both method of distribution and the meaning of equitably.
But arguing that people should not have to have healthcare coverage seems asinine. On the one hand, refusing to continue to treat the person needing care who has expended all of his/her assets is morally wrong wrong. On the other hand, expecting that the person who has refused to obtain healthcare coverage will not want to receive lifesaving care seems incredibly naïve. The only commonsense answers insist that everybody have coverage, through either mandatory insurance or socialized medicine.
4 comments:
Thank you for your voice of reason.
I also am mystified at the reactions, many of which are coming from people who in fact know nothing of what's in the new health care law nor how its provisions will be implemented. They operate out of the worst kind of ignorance. They show absolutely no sense of care or responsibility toward others and many nonetheless claim to be of the faithful. All of it saddens me.
I also find it reprehensible -- and criminal -- that those who disagree feel its okay to lob death threats and engage in violence. We all need to speak out against that.
In the end, a decision on health care is one of moral rightness and human decency. If you have more than most why would you not help those that don't. It is not about entitlement, it is about rightness. Those that are promoting violence or are in great anger simply don't know the basics of the bill. That is probably the scariest part. To react in anger and ignorance of what the real issues are is the most dangerous form of protest.
Unfortunately, our technological breakthroughs have a cost that gets higher and higher. We can talk about basic health care, and we should provide it, but with no limits can we afford ALL that is available.
On the other hand, as we cure, prevent, or heal health problems, more issues will appear as without curing the first major problem the person would die.
As an example, the newspaper had an article about reducing malaria in Africa. New drugs, procedures, and tools have prevented 2 to 3 million people from dying of malaria. Now they die of starvation. So if we try to feed the people, what will be the next cause of massive deaths. Over population, war or overcrowding?
I think our technological advances and our compassion for others will not bring about utopia as we think it will.
We are already seeing that older people can not afford to retire so they continue to work at jobs that our youth used to take when the older people either died or retired.
Is there an answer? I don't know. Either solution will not make us feel better in the long run. This is where ethics, morality, and decency are in conflict.
No panacea for healthcare exists. Humans exemplify planned obsolescence, with bodies not designed to last forever. And, as you observer, one set of problems often connects to another, e.g., curing or preventing some diseases can exacerbate the problem of feeding everybody. However, none of that justifies failing to try. The challenge, it seems to me, is continuously to attempt to extend life while improving the quality of life.
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