Old people don't need companionship. They need to be isolated and studied so that it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be
extracted for our personal use.
This sounds good, lets be more like them. Lets have governmental healthcare for all that will restrict people's access to medical treatment based off of what government managers think is worthwhile and cost effective care. Now this isn't to suggest that in a free market system people could get all the surgery and medical treatment they want. Or that you wouldn't have some corporate beauracrat going 5 layers deep to find a reason why the insurance company doesn't have to pay for your surgery. But the nice thing about private companies is that there's more than one of them. If you think one of them is doing a bad job you can switch, and if enough people do then it will go bankrupt. No such like with the government. You are unfortunately pretty much stuck with the mess they put you in.
The further point is that this idea of unlimited medical treatment is really just crazy. No society is going to be able to maintain unlimited medical treatment for all. Treatment has to be restricted either by how much a person can afford to pay, or by government waitlist like the one in this article. I guess some people may prefer the latter to the former, they know they won't be able to pay anyway, so might as well take their chances with the waitlist. I just wish people who promote the waitlist strategy would at least be honest about what's going on instead of pretending that we can have unlimited healthcare for all. What if someone thought we should have unlimited food for all. That anybody should be allowed to just show up to a supermarket take whatever food they want and the government will pay for it. Would anybody think that was a good idea? because i'm pretty sure they wouldn't. There's a difference between having soup kitchens which can provide basic food, and having a complete unlimited supply for people. There's a difference between a 70 year old break his leg and having it set at tax payer expense, plus some pain killers to go with it, or the tax payers paying $500,000 for an 80 year old to get a new heart. Maybe medicare could continue to exist in a greatly reduced form or in some sort of capped system, but the rate it's going now is obviously unsustainable.
This sounds good, lets be more like them. Lets have governmental healthcare for all that will restrict people's access to medical treatment based off of what government managers think is worthwhile and cost effective care. Now this isn't to suggest that in a free market system people could get all the surgery and medical treatment they want. Or that you wouldn't have some corporate beauracrat going 5 layers deep to find a reason why the insurance company doesn't have to pay for your surgery. But the nice thing about private companies is that there's more than one of them. If you think one of them is doing a bad job you can switch, and if enough people do then it will go bankrupt. No such like with the government. You are unfortunately pretty much stuck with the mess they put you in.
The further point is that this idea of unlimited medical treatment is really just crazy. No society is going to be able to maintain unlimited medical treatment for all. Treatment has to be restricted either by how much a person can afford to pay, or by government waitlist like the one in this article. I guess some people may prefer the latter to the former, they know they won't be able to pay anyway, so might as well take their chances with the waitlist. I just wish people who promote the waitlist strategy would at least be honest about what's going on instead of pretending that we can have unlimited healthcare for all. What if someone thought we should have unlimited food for all. That anybody should be allowed to just show up to a supermarket take whatever food they want and the government will pay for it. Would anybody think that was a good idea? because i'm pretty sure they wouldn't. There's a difference between having soup kitchens which can provide basic food, and having a complete unlimited supply for people. There's a difference between a 70 year old break his leg and having it set at tax payer expense, plus some pain killers to go with it, or the tax payers paying $500,000 for an 80 year old to get a new heart. Maybe medicare could continue to exist in a greatly reduced form or in some sort of capped system, but the rate it's going now is obviously unsustainable.
posted by Trashcan at 8/04/2011 10:55:00 PM
2 Comments:
Doctors are known to be concerned about how the new rationing is working – and how it will affect their relationships with patients.
It will lead to corruption, of course, bribes to get the good medicine/surgery, just like in Lithuania, just like in all countries with socialized medicine.
I guess some people may prefer the waitlist to the paying, they know they won't be able to pay anyway, so might as well take their chances with the waitlist.
If there are two systems, public and private in conjunction, the waitlist will always be shorter.
Yeah, well when you limit the market you get a black market, just like with rent control. People are allowed to charge more than a certain amount for rent, so they charge enormous up front "key charges" which push the poor out of the market completely.
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