True, but given the ubiquitous nature of #2, it’s not surprising that people have felt the federal govt should be involved.
While there are multiple versions of the Oath, and I won’t claim to know the content of every one of them, the one I took said nothing about providing care for all regardless of their ability to pay.
“I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required…” not because someone pays, but because they are sick and require treatment.
“I will prevent disease whenever I can but I will always look for a path to a cure for all diseases.” Again, not because of an exchange of wealth, but for the purpose of preventing disease.
These are some of the reasons used when Emergency Rooms will not turn away anyone in urgent need.
I understand there has to be a line drawn somewhere. Does a dermatologist give pimple cream to someone who can’t pay to see them? Or any other non-life threatening care.
Respectfully, I think you are reading into the Oath implications that are not supportable by the text itself.
If that were true, the Emergency Medicine Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which mandates emergency treatment, would not have been necessary.
I would say that’s more of a bureaucracy thing. You’d be hard pressed to find a doctor that turned a dying person away.
It depends on what you mean by a “dying person.” (In a sense, we’re all ‘dying persons.’)
Sorry for the late response here. I was out of town…
I don’t personally care if more people were covered. They were forced to be. And that shouldn’t be our end goal IMO, otherwise lets just go to single payer where everyone is covered. I mean, you can only have 2 out of 3 here. High quality care, low cost, everyone’s covered. Take your pick… Also, you wouldn’t be doing a full repeal with no solution, as you say. The solution is to get the government the fuck out of healthcare and turn to the free market, while also eliminating state borders for insurance. Will people get burned as you say? Sure but people are getting burned right now, too. Also,what you call burning people, I call giving people the freedom to pick and choose what is best for them in a free market as opposed to a state run dictation. To your point, though and what LS said, there should be a few laws that go into place immediately after to minimize impact. I never clearly stated that before. Thomas Sowell said it best, though. “No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: “But what would you replace it with?” When someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with?”
As far as the political blow back goes.The trick is to avoid lying to the American people about what said “bill” entails. Looking at you, Obama.(You can keep your insurance/doctor.) That’s how you get a complete overhaul of government.
With all that being said, it won’t happen. Government won’t give up power. I just expect much better than the bill republicans tried to shove down our throats.
Free markets work great for many/most products and/or services. Healthcare is one of the few exceptions. Ken Arrow laid out the reasons why in his classic 1963 paper on the subject–‘Uncertainty and the welfare economics of medical care.’
I’m unfamiliar with that one–will have to read it, thanks for the heads up. That said, I think prohibiting the ability of drug companies to directly advertise to the end consumer and streamlining the discovery to product pipeline to cost less than 2-4 billion would be a big help <looks around furtively in case mentioning “pharma” drags Zep into this thread>
I’ll have to check it out. Thanks. .
You also have to deal with the systemic abuse of intellectual property laws. I am a supporter of patents, and the monopoly that goes with them, but being able to revive patent monopolies for something that is in the public domain is gross.
Hear, hear.
That’s great and all but the underlying problem with healthcare in America is cost… Absolutely NO public policy or healthcare scheme is going to bend the cost curve. Not free markets, not government option, not single payer.
Here’s the issue: The USA is the fattest, most sedentary country there has ever been. We are 4.34% of the world’s population and take over 52% of all pharmaceuticals on earth (2000 data WHO), and nearly all of The prescription opiates. The drugs are a bandaid on a bullet wound.
We live unhealthy lives, full stop. Until that changes costs will only increase.
Agreed. And I would argue that this is one aspect of the dark side of a free market economy. Not saying it means we should go full-on socialist; just saying it comes with the territory.
Yeah, I have been trying to figure out how to approach this area. All of the legal wrangling involving health care up to this point has focused almost solely on health INSURANCE, and little has been done to affect the actual COST of healthcare. Basement nailed it; the way to significantly lower costs in America is to address our lifestyle. The question is, how do we legislate that? The only thing that I can see is to somehow force people to have more “skin in the game.” They have to be responsible for more of their own healthcare costs (ironically, I think Obamacare did this to some extent by raising most people’s deductibles and co-pays). The fly in the ointment is that this disproportionately affects poor people, and this is the segment of the population most prone to “unhealthy lifestyle.” They typically buy the lowest quality food, and are the least likely to exercise and utilize preventive measures.
Since we’re going to have government way too involved in healthcare anyway. The answer is less calories and more movement obviously. But how to do it? Banning big sodas and salt didn’t work in NYC. That’s the stick solution. Why not try the carrot? Have a panel of doctors pick several markers that decrease your risk for lifestyle disease for men and women. They have to be dead simple and actually correlated to lifestyle disease. For example:
Non smoking
Waist circumference
Blood lipids/triglycerides
Blood sugar
You meet all the requirements, congratulations you get a 5% income tax deduction (or whatever carrot is actually compelling and reasonable).
Love the idea (or something close to it).
Definitely an approach worth considering. Could tie it to a reduction in health-insurance rates.
It would be very easy to demagogue though. I was sitting here thinking what happens the first time a single mother minority overdoses on diet pills trying to meet the minimum.
Plus minorities, women and the poor all have a harder time losing and maintaining weight. So it would literally benefit white men more.
I also fear it would be watered down to be more “inclusive”. So instead of a waist measurement of say 38" for men they bump it to 45".
Oh, it’s worse than that. You’d also get pushback from the right, accusing you of Big Brother/nanny-statism.