The Health Care Continuum, Where Do You Stand?

I joined this forum in large part to better understand the political positions of Americans. I've read hundreds of posts here and haven't made much progress to that end so far. Where do you stand on the continuum of possibilities related to Health Care?

At one end of this continuum, a person might sincerely believe no one has a right to expect anything more than he can pay for. He would either pay up front for any health service or medication or pay with the insurance coverage he has paid for. Of course, he would pay the free market rate established without government regulations or price controls. If he couldn't pay, and no loved one or charity would or could, then he would die where he dropped.

At the other end of the continuum, a person might equally sincerely believe that every human being has an inalienable right to health care and no amount of love or money merits one man more or better health care than another. The government, he would assert, has the obligation to ensure and insure that everyone receives health care according to this ideal.

No one is going to post a 30000-word comprehensive position on Health Care, that's beyond the ability of one person anyway. But I think it is possible to explain the gist of your ideas in a few sentences or paragraphs. I'll give it a try in my next post. Saying how stupid you think my answer is though doesn't advance the discussion. The point is, What do you think? Extra credit for why you think it.

I'm not near either end of the continuum. I think "We the People", the government, has a responsibility to promote the general welfare by ensuring basic health care for everyone. I'm not convinced that it must necessarily provide every possible procedure for everyone for free.

It seems to me there are at least two different ways of looking at achieving 100% access to some level of care. One is to look at the entire profit-driven health care system and try to expand that to include everyone. This is pretty much the path we are on and of the available options, a single payer system makes the most sense to me.

Another way would be to look at a separate, government funded, charitable system of healthcare. One that doesn't primarily rely on the existing for-profit system. For example, a person could go to a government clinic staffed by a nurse and a nurse practitioner to receive routine check-ups, preventative care, and be treated for many chronic conditions. They could also dispense medicine directly. Doctors would be available online for advice, consultation, and if necessary referral. The clinic could be in a building or a specially equipped RV.


That's where I'm at and a couple of thoughts thrown in for good measure. I'm hoping some of you resist the impulse to merely attack my humble ideas on the subject and bravely explain where you land on the continuum of government's responsibility for health care.

If I have to pay thousands of dollars just to meet my deductible, and I'm healthy most of the time, then why bother putting any money into insurance in the first place? I can buy it when I'm old and sick.

The baby boomers are reaching retirement age, and someone has to pay for their health care. Well, who's going to pay for the poor ones? Not me, right?

The problem with these types of questions is that they only serve a purpose in capitalizing on human illness. We would pay less for cancer treatment if cancer were cured, so it makes sense to invest in a cure. I don't believe in capitalizing on human suffering, ergo a cure should not be withheld. A necessary vaccine should not be withheld in order to capitalize on its scarcity. But what if there was a vaccine for the common cold? Well there is, but it doesn't work very well. It's extremely expensive to implement over a long period of time, and when people can't afford to be vaccinated, they cause illness on a greater scale. This benefits viruses, not human beings.

Side note: gun violence may very well be a threat to the public health. So we should be mindful of the fact that when vectors transmit disease, the person is not the actual quality 'illness', in the same way that a murderer is not 'death,' but still causes death to occur

Immunizing the entire human race against various pathogens would greatly increase human welfare. Just think of what could be done if we prevented anyone from contracting dysentery ever again.

Healthcare on a national scale is in crisis. So why can't we treat vaccination of a single person like the treatment of all people, or should I say, illnesses?

The AHCA is a disaster. Single payer healthcare is an option, and it needs to be seriously considered.

I believe that everyone should be able to have access to affordable health care; however, people should have the right to opt out of it if they don't want it. America does have the means to give everyone access to healthcare and other countries have been successful at doing so. So many people are denied basic healthcare because they can't afford it. It would be great if we could give those people access to quality healthcare. Our healthcare system sucks now. So why don't we make a radical change that can benefit the lives of millions of people in our country.

Health care reform means giving the nutrients to the sick people and serving nutritional food in hospitals, having doctors prescribe more dietary cures first before resorting to medications.

Health care reform makes all federal programs vegan; schools, Armed Forces, hospitals and retirement homes.

Write your Green Party Candidates to do this.

I think ideally it would be 100% private healthcare, not for profit financing + charity. Unfortunately, those in the west have gotten addicted to paying high progressive taxes in favour of unsustainable programs such as socialized medicine which isn't set to collapse on itself for ~50-75 more years. Us Americans have got some hybrid system that is probably the worst of all as it neither favour to market innovation nor does it provide affordable care to most.

The best we can hope for now is direct billed government funded program for low profit groups such as chronic care, seniors, preventive, basic dental, disability, immunization, birth, emergency. Serious deregulation of the remaining alternative medical industry and a dedicated tax so politicians can't play number magic with the numbers and people see the costs of their healthcare. We also obviously need to deal with drug separately and basically create a basic insurance plan which you can add to with your private insurance.

More importantly since we are killing R&D with this socialized medicine: foster more incentives for private medical research: as such
the government should offer prizes similar to the x-prize for many key goals, should buy key patents for public use, make public labs open for innovation. None of those do I think are the government purview however it will offset some of the negative impacts by creating artificial markets for future companies that can expand when this whole socialized medicine collapses on itself.


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The Health Care Continuum, Where Do You Stand?

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i support a single payer system for basic care, similar to what the rest of the first world has.

Celebrity said:

If I have to pay thousands of dollars just to meet my deductible, and I'm healthy most of the time, then why bother putting any money into insurance in the first place? I can buy it when I'm old and sick.

The baby boomers are reaching retirement age, and someone has to pay for their health care. Well, who's going to pay for the poor ones? Not me, right?

The problem with these types of questions is that they only serve a purpose in capitalizing on human illness. We would pay less for cancer treatment if cancer were cured, so it makes sense to invest in a cure. I don't believe in capitalizing on human suffering, ergo a cure should not be withheld. A necessary vaccine should not be withheld in order to capitalize on its scarcity. But what if there was a vaccine for the common cold? Well there is, but it doesn't work very well. It's extremely expensive to implement over a long period of time, and when people can't afford to be vaccinated, they cause illness on a greater scale. This benefits viruses, not human beings.

Side note: gun violence may very well be a threat to the public health. So we should be mindful of the fact that when vectors transmit disease, the person is not the actual quality 'illness', in the same way that a murderer is not 'death,' but still causes death to occur

Immunizing the entire human race against various pathogens would greatly increase human welfare. Just think of what could be done if we prevented anyone from contracting dysentery ever again.

Healthcare on a national scale is in crisis. So why can't we treat vaccination of a single person like the treatment of all people, or should I say, illnesses?

The AHCA is a disaster. Single payer healthcare is an option, and it needs to be seriously considered.

Click to expand...

This is where I'm at too. There's a way that's reasonable!!