rick –
“his joints will be destroyed by gout, but that seems ok with quincy.”
Just what makes you think that? Because I oppose a monopoly system where a government bureaucrat can cut someone off on a whim because he deems them too old or unproductive? You never answered my questions about the mentally and physically disabled or the plain old indolent, either. Remember *your own words*:
“more will be spent on the young, the productive years on your life, and less on the last years of life.”
What if your tree trimmer friend were 80 in a nursing home instead of out working? In your and Obama’s scenario, he’d get a pain killer and be told to go home because it wouldn’t be cost effective to save his joints.
I’m advocating for a system where *everyone* who participates has the ability to seek care that is satisfactory to them at a price they are willing and able to pay. I want to do that by fixing the one systemic flaw in our current corporatist/statist non-market, as I’ve outlined above.
There are ways to provide health care for people that don’t lean on the insurance model for everything. How do you insure against a pre-existing condition? You *don’t*. You *can’t*. You *can* subsidize it.
Imagine being a person with lung cancer that’s in remission. In today’s market, you can’t get insurance. Why? It’s *illegal* to structure an insurance policy that leaves out cancer treatment. However, if one were to get rid of those laws and institute a fund for subsidizing the treatment of pre-existing conditions, then the person who has lung cancer in remission could get insured against alzheimers, broken bones, and diabetes, and then have the fund pay for any future cancer treatment.
In fact, in property insurance, a similar model exists with flood insurance. In communities where floods occur often, FEMA offers a government flood insurance program. Private insurers insure against other perils, and the National Flood Insurance Program “insures against” floods. In reality, the NFIP is more of a subsidy than insurance, because it ends up paying out more than it takes in. The program is criticized for making it more attractive to move into high-risk flood zones, but it’s easier not to build in a flood zone than it is to get rid of a pre-existing condition.
That’s just one option to make sure people get the health care they need at a price they can afford. The problem with ObamaCare is that it does nothing to address the deep flaws in our current system while at the same time stripping people of their dignity and forcing them to submit to the capricious decision making of government bureaucrats. It seems to me that the left is a little too eager to institute a health care system in which government makes life-and-death decisions for everyone.
Anyway, if you want me to leave you alone, here goes: as long as you keep trying to paint me as someone who doesn’t care about the working folks, I will keep reminding everyone here of your own statement about it being perfectly dandy for a government bureaucrat to tell someone to go off and die. The difference? I’m going after a view you actually hold.
