I saw this today on the Meme tracker and I wanted to really avoid it. Because I just do not feel that I cannot speak on Healthcare in a objective form, because it is quite the personal issue with me.
I have no healthcare insurance at all. :-((
Anyone this is in the New York Times Magazine:
You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?
If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.
In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published at the end of last year with the headline “Obama Will Ration Your Health Care,” Sally Pipes, C.E.O. of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, described how in Britain the national health service does not pay for drugs that are regarded as not offering good value for money, and added, “Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives.” And the Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, told CNSNews in April, “There is no rationing of health care at all” in the proposed reform.
Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.” The man’s response implies that if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute. The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?
Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.
The case for explicit health care rationing in the United States starts with the difficulty of thinking of any other way in which we can continue to provide adequate health care to people on Medicaid and Medicare, let alone extend coverage to those who do not now have it. Health-insurance premiums have more than doubled in a decade, rising four times faster than wages. In May, Medicare’s trustees warned that the program’s biggest fund is heading for insolvency in just eight years. Health care now absorbs about one dollar in every six the nation spends, a figure that far exceeds the share spent by any other nation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it is on track to double by 2035.
Now the Right Wing Blogs are doing some seriously loud howling about this right here. I guess that I break away from that pack. I tend to be a bit more clearer thinking about it. Hence my Moderate label. For some better perspective, Riverdaughter over at The Confluence, who is a Moderate Democrat; puts some of this in perspective:
Peter Singer is an ethicist who espouses a utilitarian view of ethics, meaning that his interpretation of general welfare extends to an economic calculation of costs versus benefits. For example, he proposes that it is acceptable to identify specific measures of when a treatment is effective enough to warrant the cost of providing such treatment.
[….]
First, it is critical to note that healthcare is already “rationed” in our country. It is “rationed” each and every day when the uninsured or under-insured are denied the same high quality treatments afforded to those without financial constraints. Anyone who has seen Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” saw through this film the soulless rationing of treatment in our country such as how the poor and indigent were treated by a for-profit hospital that dumped them on a street corner after providing only minimal care. I will never forget the morning I broke down in tears after reading about a man in our community who had cancer, lost his job and with it his health insurance. His statement “I’m just waiting to die because I cannot afford the chemotherapy drugs” exposed the unimaginable truth that our society is willing to allow people to die with little protest from its citizens. If this is already unacceptable, why would we want to factor such a strategy into any plan we devise?
Now, I have a great deal of respect for Peter Singer and his general view of the world, but his utilitarian ethical approach to healthcare reform in our country is one I cannot embrace; and the reason I cannot embrace it is because our political leaders do not use a utilitarian view when dealing with banks, Wall Street barons, and corporations. How does a society continue to exist when those who have little are turned away from life saving treatments while the wealthy live in a world where money is no object? There is something inherently wrong with standing before a nation and acting as though there is no limit to the funds our country should expend so that banks and Wall Street traders are allowed to continue to feed at the trough of excess, yet a discussion over saving the lives of our fellow citizens erodes into debate over cutting costs. Yet this is exactly what our legislators and president are doing to us on a daily basis — on both sides of the political aisle.
I agree with on all point, except when it comes to Michael Moore. Michael Moore, In my humble opinion; is a socialist Propaganda maker. Who yowls about the evils of a capitalistic society —- All the whole driving around in a limousine himself. Moore is the perfect example of a Limousine Liberal; kind of like John Kerry. However, she is correct about the whole Health-care issue. If you have good insurance, you get good care, if you have none. You get treated and released most usually.
Like I said; I do not have any sort of health insurance at all. But I just cannot get up and cheer madly about something ran by our Federal Government. I just cannot. Because this is same Government that allowed the Siege at the Waco Compound to happen; of which I have never forgiven Bill Clinton for, nor will I ever. Also Ruby Ridge and the list goes on and on. Not to mention the Medicare and Medicaid systems, how screwed up they are.
However, the Compassionate side of me, that sees the suffering and poor getting stiffed; wants to see a better system. So far, from what I have read. Obama’s plan is STILL going to leave many people uninsured. So, what is the big change? There is not really going to be any change, of great importance anyhow. The far left and special interest people are figuring this out.
So, anyhow, hopefully I did not lose any Conservative credo in this posting. 😀 :-/
Others: Don Surber, Tammy Bruce, Say Anything, The Strata-Sphere, Winds of Change.NET, PoliGazette, Sweetness & Light and The Rhetorican