Person A has a debilitating illness which will eventually kill them. Person B has the same illness, as does person C. Person A is wealthy. They can pay for the best treatment, even experimental treatments. From homeopathy to microsurgery, they get it all. Person B is not wealthy, but pays for insurance. They can receive a certain amount of treatment for their illness before they are cut off from further services. They must still have an income as well, to pay for their insurance and copay. They receive some treatment, but no exceptional measures by any means. Person C is poor and has no insurance. Too young to qualify for the Gov't major medical, too old to qualify for the children's, with too much income for charity, they have no access to healthcare beyond "urgent" care, which will not turn you away. They receive almost no treatment, some prescriptions for painkillers and antidepressants, and some pamphlets on palliative care. Capitalism plus healthcare. How much money is your life worth, and do you have that much money? To raise all healthcare to that of Person A and make it available to all, the government would have to take some control of the entire industry, as well as raise taxes for everyone. The flip side being that no one pays for healthcare, it's not an item on anyone's budget. No one wrings their hands about dialysis or chemotherapy or how to pay for that new liver. My question is this: Is it better to have an economic form of "natural selection", weeding out the infirm, or would it be better to eliminate this "selection", allowing the less fortunate hope, but at a financial and possibly economic cost? Half-measures don't seem to me to be what's called for. Either capitalist medicine or socialist medicine. Everything that is neither is worse than either.
I don't know but it sure would make planning a health care system easier if society had the courage to face this question and could arrive at a consensus. This is a philosophical question. It seems that this question and other questions related to who should die because keeping them alive costs too much to keep them alive are questions that are too scary for news media to ponder and way to scary for modern politicians of any nation to touch. Funny because forced sterilizations of defective people was acceptable political conversation prior to WW2. Both socialistic and capitalistic medical systems will eventually be forced to openly face questions of rationing as the medical device makers, surgeons, pharmaceutical industry and eventually cloned body part growers will keep on producing more medical ways that people can spend more and more money to live longer. This is not necessarily true. There are a variety of different types of mixes of socialist and capitalist medical systems being practiced in the various nations of the world and the only thing that they all have in common is that they all are more efficient systems than the US system. The only thing the USA does best is make the very highest level of medicine available in select locations for people with unlimited money. For ordinary people with average insurance plans some other countries provide higher level medical with shorter waits than the USA does. I recently heard radio show given by a guy that visited many nations to check their systems and I can only remember that the variety of what each country does well and does poorly was too much for me to remember. The Baucus Bill written by the former Wellpoint VP is going to be the core of the bill that might get to Obama's desk. The Baucus bill is essentially a federal version of what Massachusetts is doing and is intended first and foremost to increase insurance industry profits at the expense of the 4% of people (mostly young) who could afford insurance but chose not to buy it because they think it is overpriced and at the expense of the taxpayers who will be required to subsidize the insurance of people who can't afford insurance without a subsidy. There has been no increase in efficiency associated with the Massachusetts plan. Insurance rates in Massachusetts were the highest in the nation before the Massachusetts plan and they still are the highest in the nation and have continued to rise at a faster rate than the national rate of increase in health insurance premiums. I expect the more conservative ideological Republicans from safe districts and the more liberal ideological Democrats from safe districts to vote against the give away to the insurance industry bill. The less ideological Republicans and Democrats from unsafe districts who need campaign funds from the insurance industry will vote for the give away taxpayer's money and coerced insurance buyers money to the insurance industry. It should be a close vote but first we have to wait for the drama of consolidating the 2 senate bills and the 3 house bills and adding still yet more pork during the consolidation process.
In countries with First World medical care, A and B and C all receive the best available, for less than the price of B's care in the example, split among the three in proportion to their incomes.
