Posted on 02/05/2007 7:55:50 AM PST by A. Pole
[...]
Healthcare has become a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, not a social good distributed according to medical need. On average, the sickest are least able to pay, so those most in need are sometimes denied care simply because they can't afford it, while the healthy and well-insured may get a surfeit of attention. We have shifted our focus from the sick to the well.
Many people justify the shift by blaming the victims: if people would only take care of themselves, they probably wouldn't get sick in the first place.
[...]
But the sober fact is that except for a few important measures, such as immunizing children, practicing safe sex and not smoking cigarettes , we still know relatively little about how to prevent diseases. We know some risks for some major killers, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. But overall, known risk factors (except poverty) account for only a small proportion of illness, and it is not always clear that modifying them will help.
[...]
The notion that illness is largely optional plays into the hands of private insurers, who have financial interests in concentrating on services for healthy people -- sometimes called the "worried well." [...] Since the healthy outnumber the sick, these plans will also look good in satisfaction surveys. The focus on the well is reflected in our new vocabulary. Instead of medical care, we now talk about healthcare, which is delivered not by medical groups, but by health maintenance organizations. And we speak of consumers, not patients, as though they were choosing from a dinner menu rather than being treated for a disease. We are seeing a tyranny of the healthy, backed by commercial interests
[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Free market medical care bump!
Oh, please.....we know how to prevent Type II Diabetes, we know LOTS about HEART disease....and even Cancer......
We also know how to prevent AIDS.
Health care is mostly a huge subsidy to another industry and has been a way to undermine an important Republican constituency of sole proprietorships. those of us who have Medicare HMO's feel like meal tickets for fat cat docs.
You shifted the focus from "the sick to the well" when you created HMO's who broadly claimed their purpose was to "prevent sickness", and then you had some people going into the docs and hospitals for every test known to man.
Those fancy machines are expensive to buy and they charge alot for the usage of them.
The way health care worked when I was a kid-:
You got a cold: You stayed home from school and didn't spread it around the classroom, same for going to work. You didn't collect sick pay- you took your lumps, and you got back on your feet as soon as possible.
If you broke your arm, you went to the emergency room or your local MD, and it got set, casted, signed by all your classmates, and if you were lucky, someone carried your books for you.....You didn't get 3 MRI's and then get surgery that cost $90,000 for a broken arm, which kids do all the time.
You didn't have a plethera of drug users, especially the ones who are female, then pregnant, producing a kid who is behind the 8-ball from the start. You didn't demand thousands of $$$ a day care for this poor child, and then go out and produce 5 or 8 more because you cannot see beyond your nose candy. You also weren't given "counseling" for your transgressions. Your family would have handled that behind the woodshed.
I can go on and on, but the biggest problem is that we "fixed" something which wasn't broken when we got into HMO's. The only people making out on that deal is the high paid administrators of same. Employers are gouged, employees are gouged, and the illegal intruders and the drug users are draining so much out of the "health system" we currently have that we are truly watching a Titanic go down.
I don't know of any poor person denied health care in America. Indeed, some get better health care than the middle class, and that is a FACT. The Boston Globe just has an agenda.
I've seen people with assets lose almost everything or at least have their lives very negatively impacted, insured or not. For those on the edge with jobs, one visit to the emergency room can put you behind for months. It's better to find a regular doctor, pay for an annual checkup and make office calls and pay yourself if you don't have insurance because it is cheaper than an emergency room visit overall. Buy some insurance if you can possibly work it into the budget.
Health care costs are off the charts, and that is not right. I don't want to go to socialized medicine. I don't know what the answers are at this point. Don't use the health-care system unless you absolutely must.
I have seen people with the best insurance that can be gotten that do not respond to what care is available, whether physical or mental, so it all seems to even out in the end.
When it comes to health care, the poor do not get turned away and have the advantage that there is nothing to take from them so imo hospitals pad the bills for those who are insured to make ends meet, driving costs even higher
Hospitals spend tons of money on things that are frivolous, luxurious and totally unnecessary. Here locally they are buying up property and putting up expensive signs and elaborate fountains that are totally unnecessary. Some of it may help the patients, but the best help is to get better and get out of there if you can.
Medicine sucks....
Doctors suck....
Class envy rules!
The secret to success in today's America is simple: Be born with a huge trust fund and healthy genes. If you don't have the foresight to get that done, don't come bitchin' to me.
It always amazes me that so many people, instead of using rational arguments, prefer to attack the other side personally.
If envy did not exist, how would it fix this problem?
From each according to his ability to pay....sound familiar?
Healthcare has become a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, not a social good distributed according to medical need.
Another lie...............
You mean taxes? :)
Gee, I didn't know Marcia Angell had time to write between masturbating to Lenin's photo and pulling the wings off live flies.
This women implies that health care is either a commodity or a "social good". It is neither. It is a service that is consumed when delivered. Somebody has to pay for it. If she wants the taxpayers to pay for all the health service everybody ask for, then she should say so, otherwise what is the point of her article?
"...guest communist"
"It always amazes me that so many people, instead of using rational arguments, prefer to attack the other side personally."
Indeed.
Well, duh! If you're not born into the elite, quit complainin' and embrace your serfhood. ;)
But what about the other necessities of life? I wonder what the author would think of this:
Food has become a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, not a social good distributed according to hunger.Or this:
Water has become a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, not a social good distributed according to thirst.
Or this:
Shelter has become a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, not a social good distributed according to the weather.
The truth is, almost all of the necessities of life are commodities, distributed according to the ability to pay. Fortunately, we have not gotten to the point at which we think of food, water, or shelter as "social goods," to be distributed by an all-powerful bureaucracy. If that day comes, everyone but the bureaucrats will be hungry, thirsty, and cold.
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