maxwelton@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
> On Jan 31, 7:48 pm, stuff_st...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> > On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 16:34:45 -0800 (PST), maxwel...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> > >the net worth of the patient?
> > >What ever the market will bear?
> >
> > Aren't these the same? ;->
>
> Many times they are not. Compare with home costs. The
> market may sup****t $500,000 home prices in some areas.
> A lot of people may not have that net worth, but can find
> their needs met by a much less expensive place.
> However, things are different when it comes to liver
> transplants. No one no matter how rich or poor wants
> a liver transplant unless they need one. Now there is
> the situation where the person that can afford the
> $500,000 doesn't need a liver transplant but the
> person that can not afford the $500,000 does need
> a liver transplant. The free market approach tells
> us that only those that can afford to pay for them
> will receive them.
>
Which is why people who don't know whether or not they will need a liver
transplant buy something called insurance. The question then becomes, if
you don't buy liver transplant insurance, should society pay for a free
liver transplant for you anyway, in other words should whether or not
you chose to buy insurance matter in whether or not you get a liver
transplant you need but can't personally afford.
And then we ask how it's done elsewhere, the long used example being
places with universal coverage. The person needing a liver transplant
(or something else) doesn't automatically get a liver transplant in
those societies, rather a triage situation is set up by the universal
care system. If you are deemed "worthy", by *some* criteria, of a liver
transplant, then you might get one. If not, you don't.
So the question then becomes, I know this is complicated, whether or not
you want to *choose* yourself by your own actions, buying health
insurance or not, whether or not you get a liver transplant if you need
one, or whether you want someone else to decide for you, you're too old,
too sick, haven't got a "Sir" in front of your name because you didn't
pay Blair enough under the table, stuff like that.
There might be a third way, as they call it, but it's not been fought
for much as far as I can see.
--
"In August Rudyard's listlessness called for another series of major and
very unpleasant medical examinations.... He later joked ... 'If this is
what Oscar Wilde went to prison for, he ought to have got the Victoria
Cross.'", Andrew Lycett, "Rudyard Kipling"
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