Is that the excuse?
People do go without health care. People don’t typically go without what’s classed as emergency health care. The problem is that important but non-emergency cases go untreated. Like a young woman I knew with ongoing mental health problems. She had no money or insurance. When she went suicidal, she’d be treated for a week and then let go with no care because it was no longer an emergency.
Most notably, the countries whose constitutions were drafted after the lessons of the US experiment had been observed for a while. In some countries (such as the Netherlands), it is a constitutional obligation of the state to care for the welfare of its citizens.
Why does compassion always have to come from the government?
Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.
Forcing people to help others isn’t charity. Charity is giving aid to another willingly. If we do socialized health care we will be forcing quite a few people to donate.
She received care for a week, correct? Even though you stated it may not have been enough, it sure sounds like she received health care.
Sort of. The problem is that she couldn’t receive care until and unless it was an emergency situation, where she was acutely suicidal. She couldn’t receive the sort of care needed to achieve a stable life where she could actually work and take care of herself, instead of bouncing in and out of emergency departments.
And the ACA will help with this how? If simply by the sxpansion of Medicaid, then we could have just expanded Medicaid and foregone the rest, which is actually himing costs tremendously for people who are above that level.
I don’t know entirely how the economics work. The thread’s title is alternatives, is it not? I was just pointing out that it’s not entirely true that anyone can get health care in the U.S. I’m not even sure the insurance system is particularly useful - there’s something off about a system where the average person can’t pay for normal medical care.
I heard the other day that the cheapest possible plan that a 3-person family I know could get was $12,000 a year.
As I see it, the free market would work if everyone on the planet subscribes to that philosophy. As it stands right now, American companies are at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world, and thus end up exporting jobs to people in those countries which subsidize their healthcare, gasoline, education, etc. True companies put themselves in that spot but much of that was due to government control over price and wage prices. The end result was the almost total dependence on one’s employer for his and his family’s healthcare.I think your position is reasonable, but I would like to point out that the reason the free market has not been sufficient, as you say, is because it hasn’t been allowed to be. Government regulations have stifled it.
Think about all the areas which the government hasn’t (yet) completely taken over; those areas are doing pretty well. Take technology, for example Companies like Apple produce the most amazing technology the world has ever seen, because they are made up of intelligent, hard-working individuals who are allowed to operate in a free, stable market environment. That’s a perfect example of what a truly free market can do. If the free market “doesn’t work,” it’s because it’s not allowed to actually be a free market.
The government hampers the market with excessive regulations and taxes, and when the market buckles under the weight, the government says, “Look, the free market failed! That must mean we need more regulations!” and they persuade people to give them more and more power. That’s exactly what they want.
I’m not intending to come across as angry;I’m just explaining why, as you pointed out, the free market sometimes appears to “fail.”
The free market hasn’t been tried. The current pre-Obamacare system is still insurance controlled. By removing the patient as the customer and installing the insurance company as the middle man the free market was thrown out. Insurance companies merely paid whatever the medical system charged with some negotiation for their benefit, not the patients, and either raised rated or dropped coverage if you had extensive use. Doctors never competed in a free market nor had to perform to stay in business. The worst butchers simply pay their malpractice premiums and are protected from the consequences of their own incompetence.
It’s east to be compassionate when you are using other people’s money.Also when I want look at Church teaching I think the Catechism is far preferable to the Huffington Podt
You might want to look prior to WWII…health insurance was extremely limited prior to that time. (Because of wage controls put in place by the Roosevelt Administration, employers used health insurance as a non-cash fringe benefit to attract workers). There were some mutual benefit types of schemes out there and there were a lot of charity hospitals (for the most part run by the Catholic Church) that provided needed coverage to the poor…
So, Im wondering why the democrats and Obama are touting this new plan to the greatest thing ever?? It seems like this version will be much more expensive to the people who can least afford it??Also seems like the only ones coming out ahead are the insurance companies.I heard the other day that the cheapest possible plan that a 3-person family I know could get was $12,000 a year.
That’s a thousand bucks a month.
Unfortunately, while the likelihood of a malpractice lawsuit might decrease, the cost for malpractice insurance would not. The insurance companies have built themselves on the premiums they charge and would not let a little thing like lawsuit reform change their policies.Death.
Solution to healthcare in America:
We are the richest country in the world yet we have the highest per capita health care costs. Malpractice lawsuits and corporate greed are to blame. Immunize doctors from all malpractice suits except those involving willful and wanton or intentional negligence. The cost of care would drop 90% overnight.
