At 3:25 AM -0400 10/23/00, Dave Emery wrote:
On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 10:41:06PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
At 1:10 AM -0400 10/23/00, Dave Emery wrote:
Nobody dies without healthcare under our present system.
Actually, many people do. What planet have you been living on?
Many do not have insurance, and do not receive care for various ailments until it's too late. Many do not have insurance and do not have annual physicals, or mammograms, or prostate exams, or pap smears, or any of the hundreds of such things.
Some hospitals offers limited free services, some free clinics exist. But clearly many Americans are not receiving such care. And of course these "free services" are often a huge distance from _good_ healthcare. So much for "nobody dies without healthcare."
I said healthcare. Not good healthcare, or even adaquate healthcare (though in fact substantially better than almost anyone got perhaps 50 years ago or most get in the third world today). With certain minor circumstantial exceptions people need not die without benefit of significant health care resources in this society.
You didn't say "need not die," you said they _don't_ die. As for all people having healthcare, I personally know people who _don't_ have healthcare. This refutes your point by example.
(Were it my hospital, I would not think highly of Men with Guns telling me I must give $10,000 worth of ER services to someone who won't pay me back and who has no insurance.)
OK, so you would turn them out to die in the streets. Or at least want to believe that if you didn't it had been a voluntary act of charity rather than something forced on you as a social obligation.
Yes, it is my "right" to turn them away. Just as it is my "right" to not feed those on the verge of starvation, not house those sleeping in the snow and rain, and not pay for lifesaving operations. Earth to Dave: people die every day because they cannot afford a transplant they need (and which medical science has figured out how to do). What is at all surprising about this?
Whether or not you view this as bad depends on your very basic views about the social compact and fairness - is it just bad luck and tough sushi for the poor unfortunate or should we as a society offer at least some safe harbor for those who drew the short straws ? And if we do offer such, how much of our collective wealth should we spend on it - .005%, 0.5% 1 %, 5%, 35% ? And how should we decide this ? And what happens in a world in which the mechanisms by which we express such sentiments erode as states wither...
What happens? Evolution procedes apace. Those who figure out how to work hard, save from their paychecks, and prepare for the future will do better than those who don't. Sounds fair to me. More than just fair, it's going to happen. It already is. I see a widening gap between the Prepared and the Unprepared. And this is a Good Thing. Crypto anarchy will sharply accelerate this trend. And this is an Even Better Thing. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.