I wanted to link to this as it seems like a very smart comment about health care:
Health insurance is not like automobile insurance. You can mandate automobile insurance, and if people can’t afford it, they can take the bus. You can’t just “mandate’ health insurance. Either health care is a right that society provides, or it is not. It’s interesting how the system now works. As the system stands, drug addicts, diabetics who don’t comply with their regimens, and smokers who give themselves COPD can get care, as long as they either can afford to pay for insurance (pay for their sins by buying insurance and shifting the cost of their care to the rest of us) or are dirt poor. In fact, the poorer they are, the better the care. And the worse people take care of themselves, the better the care they get. You can get a heart transplant more easily than you can get a colonoscopy.
The entire post can be found here
Seems like too much of our policy, health care and otherwise, has become “slap a Band-Aid on it” instead of focusing on prevention, and doing things right the first time.
Is health care a right? If so, by what specific source in the US? Where, in general, do rights come from?
Hey JoeC:
It does seem that most of our health care policy focuses on treating people after they are sick, encouraging healthier lifestyles would probably cut out huge costs.
Mr Bettor:
As a country most of us don’t want to see the sick go untreated. In a few of your comments you have mentioned that uninsured have the emergency room. President Bush has also mentioned that everyone can use the emergency room; this sounds like we have agreement that we don’t want people dieing in the streets especially when as a country we claim to have the best health care in the world. Even though the constatition does not guarantee health care, it seems like as a country we agree that everyone should get care when they are sick. This means that the real issue is how to best care for everyone, and our current system does not do a good job.
I believe in access to health care for everyone, regardless of ability to pay or legal status.
However, I also believe that no one can get everything. We might as well start advocating for the minimum wage to be $1,000 per hour.
What do you think of this?
http://caveatbettor.blogspot.com/2008/02/arnold-kling-likes-kevin-drums-health.html