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Originally Posted by samcol
Because I don't want to pay for someone's expensive treatment due to a high risk behavior like smoking, drinking, overeating, and general laziness. Why should I have to pay for someone's insulin shots because they decided to eat a bag of donuts for breakfast and then have a snickers and a coke for lunch? Do you want to pay for my heart surgery because I smoked a pack a day for 20 years (not that I smoke)? How about spending millions a year on AIDS treatments that are totally preventable in the vast majority of the cases. Do we get to pick up the tab on that too?
Likewise, I don't like the idea of forcing someone to quit smoking, or quit eating fast food because we live under a socialized healthcare system. Even though it's a bad choice it's your right to make that choice. Socialized healthcare limits freedom.
Also, I can't buy into a health care system that concentrates more energy on curing symptoms and surviving diseases rather than prevention or curing the disease completely. I also belive that I do not need a doctor to prescribe a drug for me even if it's not approved by the FDA. The FDA is just a mafia front group for the drug companies to keep their control on the industry.
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We don't force anyone to make healthy choices. Therefore, we do not limit freedom.
As far as the whole treating symptoms instead of preventing the disease, the NHS in Britain is under a capitation system. They give a doc x number of dollars for x number of population. The doctor (or group of doctors) then choose how to spend their time to best take care of the population. This method is supposed to pivot attention to the root causes of disease and create better health. The doctors make house calls because it is cheaper for them than if a patient presents in a casualty ward.
That system has its own problems, believe you me, but again, it goes to show that there are different ways of looking at the problem.
I don't know what to say about the FDA. It has historical significance around the "Snake Oil" industry, where fantastic claims about the efficacy of medicines were marketed without scientific proof. The government needed to step in and prevent hucksters from selling poison as a cure. If you want to buy drugs that have not been approved by the FDA, I am questioning your logic. You want to consume something that has not been tested using the scientific method? Are you being scammed about the sensational headlines about the drugs that were found to be less-than-claimed effective?
Where you and I truly differ is in your first statement. I am perfectly happy and content in providing people comprehensive healthcare. I do not make judgements about the choices they made to wind up in that physical condition. That is not my place. If you smoked 4 packs a day, drank until your liver quit, and ate refined sugars until diabetes set in, I want to be there to hold the door open for you when you enter a hospital. I want to live in a society that performs that service. I would have trouble knowing that there was something I could have done (i.e. more taxes out of my pocket) to give that poor person the best medical care we can.
I also want to have social programs in place that promote healthy lifestyles.
I also want to have social programs in place that help the environment.
I also want to have social programs in place that give opportunities for all people to get an education.
I also want to have social programs in place that prevent abuse to children.
I also want to have social programs in place that achieve scientific excellence.
Maybe I am a socialist. When someone calls me that, I don't take it as an insult.