The ethics of universal health care

Braunwyn said:

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Everybody will at some point have a condition. You will, I will, everybody. It's the nature of our bodies. When you get a lump up your a**, or when a family member of your comes down with cancer, heart disease, etc, because one of them surely will, I doubt that you would appreciate the rantings of undereducated buffoons be it on or off the net.


Unconfirmed fissures? What does that mean? The publics has a right to talk flippantly about irritable bowel syndrome, collitis, chron's, cancer? That sounds remotely reasonable to you? I can't grasp what kind of pleasure you draw from that.


I ran across a kid like you last year on the net. He was mean, unreasonable, and he was treated very unkindly for his social ineptness. I found out that he had aspergers and that certainly changed how I interacted with him. If you have some kind of mental illness, than I don't want to think poorly of you. If you simply get your rocks off by being cruel, as you certainly seem to, than that's a different thing.

What you have is not a sense of humor. And it's certainly not a thick skin. People treat others how they treat themselves. I suppose that could warrant compassion in it's own right, but it's difficult.

Either way, my point is since you are making fun of symptoms that people with horrible conditions have, I have to wonder how you're going to feel about yourself when you develop disease.

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And it's not like holding down a job/paying for insurance always fixes these things anyway. I have UC, which is not as bad a Crohn's but can still be miserable if untreated. My insurance (the "good" insurance plan offered at my job) did pay for most of the testing--I'll give them that--but they really failed on the treatment side of things. I was on a GREAT medicine that made me feel better than I had in years. Suddenly, that medicine because "too expensive" and it was yoinked from the formulary without warning. Now I have to take two pills three times a day, and it doesn't work nearly as well.

The point is, mine is just a minor illustration of how screwed up our country's medical system is. Didn't a beloved member of this board DIE because his insurance wouldn't pay for a transplant? Working hard at a job and paying into an insurance plan doesn't guarantee a perosn anything. If we can't care about the fate of other people, we should at least see that our own care plans might leave us high and dry if we don't do something.

Can we at least *try* a new medical plan for our country? I don't think we could hurt worse than we already do.

Battie said:

And it's not like holding down a job/paying for insurance always fixes these things anyway. I have UC, which is not as bad a Crohn's but can still be miserable if untreated. My insurance (the "good" insurance plan offered at my job) did pay for most of the testing--I'll give them that--but they really failed on the treatment side of things. I was on a GREAT medicine that made me feel better than I had in years. Suddenly, that medicine because "too expensive" and it was yoinked from the formulary without warning. Now I have to take two pills three times a day, and it doesn't work nearly as well.

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That sucks and it's not uncommon. My brother's insurance doesn't cover all his bags. He has an ileostomy. For those that don't know, that means he has to wear an appliance (a bag) on his side that collects his waste since he can't go to the bathroom like normal people. It's just a peice of plastic, with a clip and paste. I have no idea why something so simple (plastic) is so expensive. It's just ridiculous. The only drug he takes consistently is lomotil and he's paid as much as $1/pill to $10/50 pills. It's crazy.

The point is, mine is just a minor illustration of how screwed up our country's medical system is. Didn't a beloved member of this board DIE because his insurance wouldn't pay for a transplant? Working hard at a job and paying into an insurance plan doesn't guarantee a perosn anything. If we can't care about the fate of other people, we should at least see that our own care plans might leave us high and dry if we don't do something.

Click to expand...

The way I see it, some don't care about the fate of others. They will only care when their time comes. And they are the main character in the well-cited "First they came" poem.

"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out."

Battie said:

And it's not like holding down a job/paying for insurance always fixes these things anyway. I have UC, which is not as bad a Crohn's but can still be miserable if untreated. My insurance (the "good" insurance plan offered at my job) did pay for most of the testing--I'll give them that--but they really failed on the treatment side of things. I was on a GREAT medicine that made me feel better than I had in years. Suddenly, that medicine because "too expensive" and it was yoinked from the formulary without warning. Now I have to take two pills three times a day, and it doesn't work nearly as well.

The point is, mine is just a minor illustration of how screwed up our country's medical system is. Didn't a beloved member of this board DIE because his insurance wouldn't pay for a transplant? Working hard at a job and paying into an insurance plan doesn't guarantee a perosn anything. If we can't care about the fate of other people, we should at least see that our own care plans might leave us high and dry if we don't do something.

Can we at least *try* a new medical plan for our country? I don't think we could hurt worse than we already do.

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I think you mean WinAce.

Here is the archive of the relevant website.

Allan Glenn is a 20-year old writer and poet in North Carolina, afflicted with Cystic Fibrosis, who will die unless he gets a transplant he can't afford. After a thorough examination and consultation, the doctors agreed to take his case - citing an impressive 60% survival rate for individuals in his condition. But according to his health "coverage" that wasn't good enough. They denied payment, condemning him to certain death unless he can raise the money for the procedure (almost $400,000), himself.

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Allan passed away in 2005.

Ouch, I'm sorry for your brother. :-/ That sounds miserable. I don't understand what's so expensive about a plastic bag either.

I hope I wasn't disrespectful to WinAce's memory by mentioning him here, but it seems relevant. He died shortly after I'd joined CF so I never had the honor of knowing him. But from all I heard about him when it happened (and read of his own words), I could tell that stinginess cost the world a great person.

Battie said:

And it's not like holding down a job/paying for insurance always fixes these things anyway. I have UC, which is not as bad a Crohn's but can still be miserable if untreated. My insurance (the "good" insurance plan offered at my job) did pay for most of the testing--I'll give them that--but they really failed on the treatment side of things. I was on a GREAT medicine that made me feel better than I had in years. Suddenly, that medicine because "too expensive" and it was yoinked from the formulary without warning. Now I have to take two pills three times a day, and it doesn't work nearly as well.

The point is, mine is just a minor illustration of how screwed up our country's medical system is. Didn't a beloved member of this board DIE because his insurance wouldn't pay for a transplant? Working hard at a job and paying into an insurance plan doesn't guarantee a perosn anything. If we can't care about the fate of other people, we should at least see that our own care plans might leave us high and dry if we don't do something.

Can we at least *try* a new medical plan for our country? I don't think we could hurt worse than we already do.

Click to expand...

Braunwyn said:

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Everybody will at some point have a condition. You will, I will, everybody. It's the nature of our bodies. When you get a lump up your a**, or when a family member of your comes down with cancer, heart disease, etc, because one of them surely will, I doubt that you would appreciate the rantings of undereducated buffoons be it on or off the net.


Unconfirmed fissures? What does that mean? The publics has a right to talk flippantly about irritable bowel syndrome, collitis, chron's, cancer? That sounds remotely reasonable to you? I can't grasp what kind of pleasure you draw from that.


I ran across a kid like you last year on the net. He was mean, unreasonable, and he was treated very unkindly for his social ineptness. I found out that he had aspergers and that certainly changed how I interacted with him. If you have some kind of mental illness, than I don't want to think poorly of you. If you simply get your rocks off by being cruel, as you certainly seem to, than that's a different thing.

What you have is not a sense of humor. And it's certainly not a thick skin. People treat others how they treat themselves. I suppose that could warrant compassion in it's own right, but it's difficult.

Either way, my point is since you are making fun of symptoms that people with horrible conditions have, I have to wonder how you're going to feel about yourself when you develop disease.

Click to expand...

Braunwyn said:

That sucks and it's not uncommon. My brother's insurance doesn't cover all his bags. He has an ileostomy. For those that don't know, that means he has to wear an appliance (a bag) on his side that collects his waste since he can't go to the bathroom like normal people. It's just a peice of plastic, with a clip and paste. I have no idea why something so simple (plastic) is so expensive. It's just ridiculous. The only drug he takes consistently is lomotil and he's paid as much as $1/pill to $10/50 pills. It's crazy.


The way I see it, some don't care about the fate of others. They will only care when their time comes. And they are the main character in the well-cited "First they came" poem.

"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out."

Click to expand...

morningstar2651 said:

I think you mean WinAce.

Here is the archive of the relevant website.

Allan passed away in 2005.

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This charade is disgusting, vile, and wrong.

The argument here is not about helping others. If it were, you would be at a severe loss. Statistics show that people opposed to expropriation, are on average FAR more generous with their own money, time, and energy; people who are for expropriation are some of the least generous people in society. Maybe if those people would stop being hypocrites and start acting like those who favor freedom there would not be any reason to demand expropriation. There are plenty of people out there helping each other without the government expropriating them. Furthermore, how do you know that any of these people would have been given a chance were there government dictatorship in the USA? In England the extremely sick and elderly are already being treated as second class patients, what makes you think this case would be different? How do you know that the government in it's machine-like inhumanity would not have made WinAce another victim of the socialized system's typical rationing?

If you really, truly care you will be too busy actually helping people out and not have the time to sit talking about how the government should be taking more control of people's lives. The statistics show us who really cares

DarkProphet said:

So you would rather have a private corporation (with it's machine-like inhumanity) make medical decisions for you based on how much money it costs them?

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I would probably rather have corporations making the decision than the government, as the government federal government takes monopolies, whereas if I don't like one corporations decisions I can go to other ones. For example in Canada private health practices are outlawed, excepting a few grandfathered institutions. So if the government makes a decision and you don't like it you either go home and be sick/die, or go to America. However, this is a logical fallacy false dichotomy. There are more than just get rich corporations out there vs the government. There are thousands of private charities, NPO's, and churches out there just ITCHING for an opportunity to help. Imagine how great it would be if even more people volunteered --perhaps, say, the people who feel it is the job of the government, not themselves, to take care of these things?

I am surprised that WinAce's family and friends could not gather the funds needed. I will not boast in myself, but I will boast on the behalf of my brothers and sisters: when a certain family at my church was in need my congregation of about 700 people were able to produce about $20,000 in 24 hours. I can imagine that if a prolonged effort were made that several hundred thousand could have been produced. I am truly sad that it was different for WinAce. I saw his picture and he seems like a smiling, good boy.

You have a point in saying that not everyone would get treatment but the point remains that not everyone CAN get treatment. Hard decisions must be made at some point but who do you want to make those decisions? A corporation trying to make a buck or a government organization who's mission statement is to save lives?

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Again this is a false dichotomy. I thank you for your time and attention in reading my posts. But, this is just a false dichotomy. The government has great power to do harm and little power to help. Look at Hurrican Katrina. It is apparent that charitable organizations such as Habitat For Humanity and even WAL-MART did far more good than the Federal Government. In an interview with John Stossel, the mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin was asked why it is so hard to get help rebuilding from the government. He acknowledged that is it, and said "That's because we have to build in a lot of checks and balances". The government is a political organization whose nature is more to appease than to help. The problem is that with the government the squeaky wheel or even the wheel with connections gets the grease, not necessarily the wheel that needs it most. People seem to think that 'corporation' is French for "Mister Burns". On the contrary, there are many insurance companies that are staffed by reasonable people who do, in fact, have warm, beating hearts rather than metal valve structures pumping oil and meanness. Also there are thousands of Christian run hospitals out there that, while they want to stay in the black, are there to help the world.
Every day I see religious conservatives and other freedom loving people setting up and working in charities. There are thousands of hospitals and free clinics and all sorts of charities out there set up by Cold Hearted Religious Conservatives to help others. I see St. Mary's Hospital and all sorts of other similarly named groups like the Salvation Army. I have yet to see a United Socialists Hospital For the Poor Suppressed Proletariat. If totalitarians wanted to set up volunteer and philanthropy supported groups like that they definitely could. They really, truly could be out there solving problems. Instead, most are just busy slandering people about how little they care because they want freedom not totalitarianism.

If you have more to give then yes statistics would show that you give more.

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This is not the case. What has been found is that political conservatives give on average 30% more of their income to charity than political liberals, despite earning on average 6% less. As the author of the study said " . . . the lil ol' farmer in South Dakota outgave people in San Francisco"

Still, it doesn't matter how much you as an individual gives, can you build a hospital or purchase an x-ray machine on your own?

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I don't understand. Why does in not matter how much individuals give? If a bunch of individuals give together then doesn't that make a huge wave of charity? Are you sure there has never been a person to do the majority of financing to build a new hospital? Didn't Bill Gates give away over $300,000 in just one donation? I don't see your point here.

Like I've said. The debate here is not To Help or Not To Help? "Freedom or Coercion?" --that is the question.

KarateCowboy said:

For example in Canada private health practices are outlawed, excepting a few grandfathered institutions.

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What kind of private health practices are outlawed?

So if the government makes a decision and you don't like it you either go home and be sick/die, or go to America.

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Actually your doctor makes any such decision, not the goverment.

KarateCowboy said:

This charade is disgusting, vile, and wrong.

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You are the charade KC, as far as digusting and vile goes --> pot/kettle?

The argument here is not about helping others. If it were, you would be at a severe loss.

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Severe loss of what?

Statistics show that people opposed to expropriation, are on average FAR more generous with their own money, time, and energy; people who are for expropriation are some of the least generous people in society.

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For one, I am not for expropriation. And you continually bringing up stats about what people do and don't do is just a tad hypocritical.

If you really, truly care you will be too busy actually helping people out and not have the time to sit talking about how the government should be taking more control of people's lives. The statistics show us who really cares

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As opposed to your hobby of trolling? You're pretty ridiculous.

KarateCowboy said:

This charade is disgusting, vile, and wrong.

The argument here is not about helping others. If it were, you would be at a severe loss. Statistics show that people opposed to expropriation, are on average FAR more generous with their own money, time, and energy; people who are for expropriation are some of the least generous people in society. Maybe if those people would stop being hypocrites and start acting like those who favor freedom there would not be any reason to demand expropriation. There are plenty of people out there helping each other without the government expropriating them. Furthermore, how do you know that any of these people would have been given a chance were there government dictatorship in the USA? In England the extremely sick and elderly are already being treated as second class patients, what makes you think this case would be different? How do you know that the government in it's machine-like inhumanity would not have made WinAce another victim of the socialized system's typical rationing?

If you really, truly care you will be too busy actually helping people out and not have the time to sit talking about how the government should be taking more control of people's lives. The statistics show us who really cares

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Really? This is your answer to the medical issues facing the country? Just stop taxing people and suddenly the U.S. will be bursting with people wanting to donate for others medical care? You really think this is a practical solution?

KarateCowboy said:

This charade is disgusting, vile, and wrong.

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I know... so why do you still persist with these broken-record responses that have been dismissed time and time again?

In England the extremely sick and elderly are already being treated as second class patients, what makes you think this case would be different? How do you know that the government in it's machine-like inhumanity would not have made WinAce another victim of the socialized system's typical rationing?

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I live in England and I’ve never seen the sick and elderly being treated as second class citizens (except possibly in some private care homes). People don’t get transplants in this country because they are either unsuitable for the procedure (ie the risks of the procedure outweigh the possible benefits) or there isn’t an organ available. And yes, there is rationing, but decisions on procedures are made by medical bodies like NICE, not insurance companies. In the most case, a patient’s treatment is the decision of the doctor and the patient in question. How can you possibly think that having a non-medical body making clinical decisions is a good idea?

The NHS isn’t perfect, but for the most part the problems are caused by years of inadequate funding from the conservative government, and the subsequent labour government pouring money in the wrong places.