Point of View Gun

[mama_pipa]

Maybe I have been shot with it one to many times, because I find myself understanding most points of view regarding a particular issue or topic. This has the downside that rarely do I ever have my own convictions on an issue. Being strictly neutral, I piss off everyone

Comments

[yakshaver]

There are other angles as well. For political issues, I tend to focus on fundamental rights, in the Enlightenment sense, and utility, in the John Stuart Mill - the greatest good for the greatest number - sense.

This leads me, for instance, both to support gay marriage and to be baffled by people who oppose it. Marriage is a state institution which conveys legal privileges upon people. To deny it to a class of people is to deny them equal protection under the laws. Either we must allow all citizens to marry, or we must cease treating it as a state institution.

Health care, on the other hand, I view from the perspective of utility. A healthy population is a more productive population, which advances everyone's well-being. Furthermore, it turns out that as a practical matter, in a rich society such as ours, we end up bearing the cost of everyone's health care regardless of whether we do so in a planful manner. The gravely ill indigent are not routinely turned away from our hospitals: the public reaction to the occasional

[abce]

Health care is not a right. Posit this thought experiment:

Over the next ten years, falling attendance in medical school leads to a shortage of trained medical professionals. No longer can a given level of health care be provided to the populace, in general or in whole. Has the government just deprived the citizens of a right?

The worst part of the debate is how wrong-headed the advocated of single-payer are. The VA, as well as a lot of foreign systems, are all great examples of single-payer failing *worse* than the badly regulated market we have. Our health care market has issues (a lot of which arise from market responses to dynamics tampered with under FDR), which can be resolved, but health care as a right? Poppycock.

Don't get off your high horse, but don't necessarily stay out of line.

[goddessfarmer]

I disagree with the statement that "foreign" systems (I assume you mean non-US) are worse than the US healthcare for the wealthy system. In all of the cases where friends of mine either live outside the US or have needed treatment while traveling outside the US, the quality, consistency, and timeliness of care has been equal to or in many cases better than the US care. For a good and well researched analysis by an American living overseas see this post: http://luna-the-cat.livejournal.com/56994.html.

[abce]

Hmmm, I could take an hour and shred that "well-researched analysis", but:

* Education as an infrastructure is failing, so arguing that it is a good model is not compelling to people who advocate market reforms to improve it, like the DC charter program does.
* Anecdotes for traveling American quality of emergency care, compared to citizen maintenance care abroad, is also not compelling; instead I'd recommend looking into how long it takes to schedule things like MRIs, cancer survival rate (highest in the US), survivability of early births. Are their problems with health care in this country? Absolutely. But repeating the mistakes of other systems (many of which hide their worst problems by riding on our coattails) is not the solution.

[goddessfarmer]

Cancer survival rate might be highest in the US, but so is C-section rate, where it is 25% here and 5% in most of Europe. Also, cancer survival with what quality of life? have you ever seen someone prolong life here in ever greater amounts of pain just because they could pay for the privilege? I have. It's really ugly. My personal experience with the US system recently has been abysmal. A 2 week wait for care for a life impairing condition even though I could afford to pay for it. Denial of Insurance, even though I can afford to pay for it. I am still trying to find insurance. Hospitals which charge self-pay customers more BECAUSE THEY CAN. Top that all off with a MD friend of mine who just lost his job because the teaching hospital can't afford to pay him. Do you have a plan that would fix this?

[gmpe]

I find myself in a similar boat to yours. It is frustrating sometimes.

[perspicuity]

i'd like to see a system that also rewards self-reliance as much as possible to the point of treating people who can manage to pro-actively do preventative stuff and life affirming stuff be treated as royalty ;)

it would be nice to have quality care when i need it banked away, as opposed to paying for it and not needing it, and wasting that money basically.

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