I have to admit that I’ve fallen out of touch with the state of the healthcare debate going on in Congress, and the votes. I found it so difficult to get past rhetoric and to facts, that it feels like I’ve been left entirely out of the debate. I’d love to discuss the merits, but it seems that everyone’s so set on passage or failure that discussion is only to determine who you feel sorrier for.
Plenty of the people I’ve spoken to think that healthcare is a human right. None have been able to answer my question about the extent of the obligation. Edge cases usually open for debate might be abortion or cosmetic surgery, and things like growth hormone treatments for kids who are destined to be short.
If healthcare is a universal human right, and I’m leaning towards thinking that it’s not, to what extent? I’ll forego the cases I mentioned above, and consider them certainly subordinate in terms of influencing my beliefs. I’m open to discussing first-aid and community-clinic level healthcare. Fell off your bike and broke your arm? Got a cold? Have a more dire symptom which may be something eminently treatable? I could buy into treating those as something considered to be a right.
If you need a triple bypass, it’s probably the consequence of lifestyle choices. If it’s your right to get a $50,000 operation, wasn’t it your responsibility to society to make good lifestyle choices? You have a right to both eat Big Macs and get someone else to pay for your choices?
Calling them “death panels” is a great way to demonize people who decide where the limits are, but someone’s got to make the decision. Rights must be balanced in some ways with responsibilities. There are limited resources available for healthcare. Even if the limit is now humongous, there’s only so much to go around. We can only pay with the money we have, and if healthcare becomes 100% of the economy, then nobody’s doing anything else.
If not, and there are a million people with something for which there’s a million dollar cure, we’ve got to spend a trillion dollars. What money will be left over for antibiotics when someone gets the measles because his neighbor refused to have his kids vaccinated?
If money gets in the way of the discussion, let’s instead consider that a cure for breast cancer can be made from the bark of a particular tree found only in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez decides to seize control of these trees and holds them “hostage”. Are we obliged to go to war to kidnap the trees for humanity’s sake? Even if there’s only 1, it’s 10,000 years old, doesn’t seed, and might die if cuttings are taken, or if we might foolishly attempt to relocate the entire thing? If we do try, and the tree dies during its extraordinary rendition, has someone committed a crime against humanity? If so, what if it can only cure one person?
There are obviously limits.
All I’m asking for is a discussion about what reasonable limits might be, and we can at least find out if there’s a place to compromise. After all, nobody wants even the best healthcare to be free if the system will collapse upon itself.
Got any ideas for a reasonable starting point?