CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?

[Dave Emery]

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.  

	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.



> 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.
> 


-- 
	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die at die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. 
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2  5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18