Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Healthcare: a right, a privilege, or something else?

Cynthetiq · 08-22-2009, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scout

Here's the gist of what I'm seeing in this thread and several others on the board.....Ultimately the people that are proponents of government run health care just want to be able to tell people how to live their lives. It's shaping up to be a control freak thing. If you don't live a healthy productive life just like the gooberment tells you to you won't be covered when you get sick, health care isn't a "right" then it's merely a "privilege". Funny how people are entitled to welfare no matter how they live or apply themselves but you want gooberment control of health care so you can decide who is covered and who isn't by the manner in which they took care of themselves. If you practice unsafe sex and contract AIDS you aren't entitled or if you have a shitty job and get cancer because of it you aren't covered because coverage for those illnesses is a privilege.

This thread isn't about welfare, and I see abuse for welfare all the time since I live 3 blocks from the NYHCA or as some people call the Projects. That's saved for another thread.

No that's my intention or reasoning at all. There are no guarantees in life. No guarantee you'll live a long life, no guarantee you'll life a happy one, no guarantee you'll find the love of your life, no guarantee that you'll have children, no guarantee that the job you want to have you will get and will pay enough to live the lifestyle you want to live. I didn't mention lifestlye as anything, interesting you attributed that ideology to my post. I didn't say anything about cancer from smoking or AIDS from sex. Ignorance is the only rationalized reason to believe those are the only reasons for getting these 2 ailments.

Last year my aunt died of cancer and her care was paid 100% for by Medicare. It paid for all of her operations, chemo, etc. She lived a menial life since she didn't make a high salary before she took ill. The state of California paid for all of her treatment, including gamma knife surgery for a brain tumor. Seems to me like a poor person still can get quality care.

I know of people here in NYC who get the AIDS medication under some other programs headed by NGOs sponsored by pharmaceuticals and philanthropists. This actually is my favorite opinion and result since it's something that is a CHOICE by a group of people that are interested in the cause.

The government isn't an infite black box of money, so there's going to be some sort of limitations of sorts. NHS in England already has such a thing in place Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes - Google Books. What I've also read is that France is also looking to increase it's funding via copays and other payment types so that they can increase the amount of funding they have.

The argument of paying for fire and police protection isn't a similar argument at all. Police and Fire departments in one area don't dramatically burden the entire area in such skewed manner if the population density gets higher. Someone's LOSS due to theft or fire doesn't impact the rest of the citizen's cost of living in the same manner as health care.My point about this whole thing isn't about anything but FISCAL responsibility. I don't care if you're poor, things have to come from somewhere, and it is unfair to burden future generations with any kind of deficit or debt.

So, if the interest is in keeping everyone healthy. Great. Fund it properly.

But every place that I see with such programs has not been able to self sustain it fiscally. This is UK, France, Iceland...