Healthcare is a touchy subject. There are so many deeply emotional stories of family members dying painful and seemingly needless deaths that we feel the need to do something to help them. Even I, as a libertarian, feel that we as a nation should be able to do better. Before reading further I would like you to read this post on a far left liberal blogging website.
That blog posting is rather crass but deeply emotional. I am willing to bet that most of us come away from reading it with a feeling of sadness for that woman’s brother and a sense of wanting us to do better when it comes to health care availability for all. Didn’t you?
Of course, being a far left liberal website, this woman blamed the republicans and the “tea-jadist” for the painful death of her brother. And since this website does not allow non-member comments all the comments to her blog post were in full support and agreement with her point of view on his death. After all, he went to the doctor for a pain in his buttocks on December 3 and ended up having to wait until February 25 to talk to a pulmonologist about a 3cm spot they had found on his lung. The suggestion was that if he had not had to wait they could have stopped the metastatic cancer that turned out to be the cause of his pain.
Before I go further I would like to say that I have a deep sense of compassion for this woman’s brother and the pain he suffered. My father also died from cancer that had metastasized, as well as my wife’s father. It will be a wonderful world when no one has to go through such agony and we can all live long and healthy lives with quick and quiet deaths at the end. Unfortunately, the world of Star Trek and the one shot cure has not yet arrived.
Now, for the errors in this woman’s thinking on the death of her brother: he went to the doctor for a pain in his buttocks – not for a pain in his lungs or for breathing difficulties. The fact that ER personnel apparently ordered chest x-rays for a pain in his buttocks suggest that they heard something in his breathing. Something that gave them enough pause to order a chest x-ray for a patient that was complaining of a pain in his buttocks. X-rays are expensive and ERs don’t order them for no reason; especially for a patient that has no visible means of paying for them. And the wait for the pulmonologist is normal even if you have insurance. I myself had to wait six weeks to see a pulmonologist after an MRI showed a small spot of scar tissue in my lungs. So, overall it sounds like he was treated pretty well – whether he had insurance or not. This unfortunate man had lung cancer that had metastasized and had spread to the bone in his buttocks. Metastatic cancer is an insidious disease that is almost impossible to cure and almost always leads to a slow and painful death. His horrible demise was already set before he ever made that first ER visit.
The republicans and tea-partiers had nothing to do with this; they did not create metastatic cancer or give it to this man. No amount of socialized healthcare would have saved him either. He was going to die. What socialized medicine would have done in this case is rip-off the system for a minimum of $22,000. How do I know that? The woman stated that the man’s friends had donated the $2,000 that a proctologist had wanted to do some type of outpatient surgery and that he could not have that operation done because the hospital wanted $20,000 for the use of the operating room. If the man had had insurance then he would have received this operation – probably for a cost to the health care system far greater than the $22,000 total mentioned. And this surgery would not have done anything to save this man’s life. Yes, the surgeon might have discovered the cancerous bone, and might have even cut it out, but the man would have still died a slow and painful death. At most, the surgeon would have alleviated the man’s suffering for a brief time – only for it to return within a few months.
At this point I’d be willing to bet that you are expecting me to expound on the virtues of our private health care system and rail against socialized medicine. After all, I’m supposed to be a libertarian – right? And Canadians – who’s socialized medical system produces long lines and government entities deciding who dies and who doesn’t – come here in droves for health care – don’t they?
Well, even for me it is not that simple. Yes, I am a libertarian but when it comes to health care you are talking about people’s lives – the most precious liberty of all. Someone’s ability to pay for health care, or health insurance, should not be the main factor in deciding whether they get the health care that they need. Just because someone has money does not mean that they are more worthy of being saved than those that don’t. We, as a nation, can do better than this. However, the bloated Obama’ Care program will do nothing to help the current situation. The far left’s answer to everything - government control - will not do anything but create another bloated bureaucracy and cost the nation even more. That proctologist’s operation would have cost the taxpayers that $22,000 dollars (probably more under government controlled heath care) and in return the man would have died anyway. The republicans and tea-partiers are not saying that we don’t need to do something about the state of our current health care system – they are just saying that the liberal Obama solution is not the right one.
Despite the cries from conservatives about Canadians coming here in droves for their health care, Canadian surveys show that less than 0.5% of Canadians sought medical care in the United States and less than a quarter of those did so expressly. In other words, most of the 0.5% did so just because they were already here. So this particular argument against socialized medicine is a red herring designed to distract attention from the fact that a far greater percentage of Canadians are happy with their health care system (75%) than are Americans (%25). In one famous case, Shona Holmes, a Canadian, came to the Mayo Clinic for a “life threatening” condition because she could not get the care she needed in a timely manner in Canada. She even went on to appear in ads in the United States warning Americans about the dangers of adopting a Canadian style health care system. The condition that she had is known as Rathke's cleft cyst. She described this condition as a life threatening brain cancer that was taking her vision and (through suggestion) would eventually take her life. In fact, Rathke's cleft cyst is a benign (non-cancerous) growth that occurs on the pituitary gland. It is most often found during autopsies of individuals who died from unrelated causes. Sufferers of Rathke’s cleft often have disturbances to their vision but actual death rate due to Rathke's cleft cyst is 0%.
There are no real statistics that can be used to support the idea that the US health care system is better than any other developed nation. In fact, all the statistics show otherwise – we are near the bottom. We spend more money for health care per capita than any other nation and yet we rank 37th for overall health care. Still, nothing in Obama Care is going to improve this. Expanding federal government by forcing a few million people to buy health insurance – that do not want it – will not fix it.
The conservative right also complains about the possibility of the government deciding who lives and who dies. This is a valid concern and, considering how lousy the government is at running most social programs, one which will most likely come to pass under Obama Care. The problem that I see with this argument from the right is that someone is always deciding who lives and who dies. Right now the main factor in that decision is money. Those that don’t have money either don’t get the care they need or have to wait for months to get approval for life saving treatment on Medicaid. Are the corporate pirates of Enron, or Lehman Brothers, or Fanny Mae anymore worth saving than those who, perhaps, spend their lives volunteering to help others and have little in the way of capital assets of their own?
Health care is a limited resource, one which everyone needs at some point in their life, and something that most of don’t really think of as optional. This in itself makes it a service that does not fully work under the capitalist system. For it to continue on in its current state is simply unacceptable for most of us. Yet, nothing in Obama Care will help make anything any better. In fact, it will do to health care what the liberal ideas have done to our school system. It will bring down the level of care to the lowest common denominator for all of us rather than lifting it up for the unfortunate few.
What are we to do? I don’t have the answers for that one. What I would do is scrap Obama Care in its entirety and start over. I would bring in doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, and insurance company representatives, as well as everyday citizens, to talk about the issues that they face and the pressures that keep their cost rising. I would attempt to begin solving the issues without more government programs and bureaucracies to drive up the cost. I would look at existing programs to see what works and what doesn’t. And, even though I am a libertarian, I would look at taking out the profit motive where possible. A fully socialized health care system where everyone receives the most drastic of treatments in the attempt to save their lives at all cost would be a dramatic failure – a cost burden that would end up collapsing our entire way of life. However, the “money or your life” type system that would exist under a fully capitalist system is not acceptable either.
Alternate Blog: http://libertarianorbust.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/who-wins-with-the-incandescent-light-bulb-ban/
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