-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 01:10:58AM -0400, Dave Emery wrote:
On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 08:53:59AM -0700, Nathan Saper wrote:
In theory, fine. However, we live in a society where people are not automatically given healthcare. If you don't have insurance, and you don't have the money to pay for treatment, you're shit out of luck. If the insurance companies deny treatment to people who MAY develop a disease later, they are setting these people up to die without healthcare.
Nobody dies without healthcare under our present system.
Sadly, at least for those of extreme libertarian bent that make up the choir on this list, our society has chosen to pass laws that require hospitals and to some degree other medical treatment facilities to treat patients who cannot pay - mostly at their expense. ANYONE with a life threatening or even just very serious medical condition can walk into most any emergency room and get full medical treatment by law even if there is no insurance and no money to pay. For the most part this treatment is funded by hospitals by hidden (and sometimes partly overt) charges built into their fee structure - in effect we already are paying a tax in our present private insurance systems and Medicare/Medicaid (and especially for private cash paying patients who pay full rate and don't get the deep discounts that Medicare and HMOs negotiate from providers) that provides this last gasp safety net coverage to the indigent.
This is true in theory. However, from what I have read, it appears that the care given to these people is far from the quality of care given to those who can pay. Also, many diseases require very expensive treatments, and I do not believe the hospitals are required to pay for these.
Of course, in the libertarian ideal universe someone not completely indigent who had a genetic condition that made them high risk might still be unable to get any kind of catastropic medical insurance and might be wiped out of virtually all assets by a serious illness, even one completely unrelated in any way to his genetic predisposition.
I think that's it, basically.
Maybe I view things differently than you do. I just think that in a country as rich as ours, we can afford to keep our population healthy.
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