Another thread got off on the topic of health care/the social safety net and I don't want to hijack it, but I do think this is one of the most serious problems we face and an adult discussion of it would be helpful. So from the other thread:
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Originally Posted by Noah930
wd, there's some incongruity in your posts. You claim that you're a realist. And several of your posts in this thread support that. But at the same time, you see nothing wrong with the system when it applies to your own parents. On one hand, you say the system is broken. People should not be guaranteed to anything and everything in their old(er) age. But by your own admission, you and your parents have benefitted from this broken system. And when someone (perhaps a little brusquely) suggested that your parents' situation is an example of why the system is broken, you bristled at that, claiming the other poster was cold and heartless.
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I think everyone agrees that our economy can't support unlimited health care for everyone no matter how we pay for it. Porsche-O-phile said that you should only get health care if you can afford it. Rationing health care based on your ability to pay
is cruel and heartless and there are much more sensible ways to do it.
My parents are both in their early 80s and in very poor health and both have DNR orders if anything life threatening occurs. The rule doctors follow is that in the absence of orders to the contrary (a DNR for example), every life saving effort will be made regardless of the patient's overall condition. There was a provision in the new health care law that reimbursed the doctor for discussing this with the patient's family so plans for DNRs etc could be made, but conservatives raise such a hue and cry that it was removed. So now we are back at unlimited care unless the patient's family intervenes (and ironically the same people who say we're spending too much are responsible for it). There is no real rationing of care when your care is paid for by taxpayers. So we need a real conversation about rationing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Noah930
You say the system is broken because it's poorly managed. So what's your solution? People pay in a pittiance, but then seem to reap a lot more in the end. That's the crux of the problem, IMO. What's the solution? Rationing? Your parents might be dead were we to have rationed their care.
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My parents would definitely be dead if health care were doled out strictly on the basis of their ability to pay. You are absolutely right, we pay in a pittance, yet people who haven't yet encountered the other end of the system think they're being robbed.
American taxpayers ARE being screwed. Health insurance companies get a government subsidy to profit from selling insurance to the healthiest group of Americans - those in their working years who are healthy enough to work - while taxpayers get stuck with insuring the sickest groups - the indigent and the elderly. As I see it we can either fix that iniquity, or raise more money, or do as Porsche-O-File suggests and let the wealthy live while the poor suffer and die.