Dying For Want of Insurance
by KevinFebruary 28th, 2007
Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren’t so hard to find.
If his mother hadn’t been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
We are the wealthiest society the world has ever seen. Every other industrial country in the world has some form of universal care. Keeping any members of that society from basic treatment is simply mean-spirited and black hearted. It really is just that simple, and no amount of Ayn Rand inspired, Milton Friedman approved bullshit will ever change that.
And how much money did you spend on medical care for the indigent last year?
My employer and I combined to spend at minimum 2.9% of my annual salary to that very cause, not counting charitable contributions.
SD
Sigh. I was wondering how long it would take for you to show up with some Ayn Rand crap. First, charity is not now and never has been a substitute for universal health care. Charity cannot provide universal health care, and that means that giving to charity, while better than not giving to charity, does not solve any of the underlying problems and, in fact, adds more layers of bureaucracy that have to be negotiated by the people in this story. Not to mention the erratic nature of charitable giving means that good programs can often be lost due to a lack of funding in just one small time frame. So, in short: apples are not Buicks, no matter how you may wish them to be.
Your question, and the implication behind it, just means that you want one of these two options:
a)You don’t have to pay more taxes
b)Your taxes continue to pay for only what they pay for now.
You think its morally better to not tax people and/or keep the taxes we spend on the same things we have now than provide basic health care for everyone and gain the systematic benefits of universal health care. Fine, but don’t think your juvenile “well, I bet you don’t give all your money to indigent health care!” ‘argument’ changes the fact that such a position is mean spirited.
Or maybe c) I think you’re a hypocrite because you keep using ‘we’ when you really mean ‘you’
The reality is, I’m betting nearly anyone of us on this list could get by on a lot less then what we do. However, we enjoy our comfort, so it’s easy to obsolve ourselves of moral responsibility for others by hiding behind an anonymous ‘we’ and expecting others to do something about problems.
That’s why I’m opposed to doing this through the government: it’s primarily away for us to force others to do for us what we refuse to do ourselves.
That’s why I’m opposed to doing this through the government: it’s primarily away for us to force others to do for us what we refuse to do ourselves.
Sorry, but that’s a giant, steaming crock. If we were advocating that everyone except for us help to pay for such programs, you might have a point. But that’s not at all what we’re saying. Given that most of us “could get by on a lot less,” that seems to imply that we’re all in the higher tax brackets (if not the top ones), meaning that nearly any one of us would be paying a disproportionately large share to help support it. That hardly qualifies as “hiding behind an anonymous ‘we’.”
“Or maybe c) I think you’re a hypocrite because you keep using ‘we’ when you really mean ‘you’”
I’m sorry — am I suddenly exempt from paying taxes? Cause, that would be kinda cool if it was true, but I don’t think it is. And I don’t think I have ever argued for “universal care but Kevin gets to do what he wants”.
Your point about getting by on less is true — it’s hard to deny yourself or your loved ones comforts. I don’t doubt that I and pretty much everyone else could be doing more. But, as I have already pointed out probably a bit too snarkily, charity simply cannot take the place of a government program, not for something like this. Without the systematic benefits of universal health care, we just don’t get the savings and efficiencies of scale that would make the whole thing work. Charity is better than nothing, but it cannot be the whole answer because it does nothing to change the broken system.
Kevin wrote: “…but don’t think your juvenile “well, I bet you don’t give all your money to indigent health care!” ‘argument’ changes the fact that such a position is mean spirited.”
And possibly more expensive in the long run. People without health care put off going to doctors as long as possible, meaning they don’t (can’t, really) take advantage of preventive health care. In the case of serious illness, the longer you wait, the care generally becomes more expensive. (For the Rand-ists out there for whom mean-spiritedness is a virtue)
Speaking as one from Canada where we supposedly have universal health care, it is not the panacea that socialist thinkers like to say it is. There are many pitfalls and mistakes that are made within the system and in reality it is nowher near universal.
Big U:
Nobody’s arguing that Canada’s system is perfect, or even close to it. But for most people, especially those who can’t afford to buy health care services out-of-pocket, it’s better than what we’ve got. And in an interesting ironic twist, the US spends more per capita on government-provided health care than Canada does, even though Canada ostensibly covers everyone and the US only covers a small subset of its population.
rand and friedman were not in favor of keeping people away from what they wanted and needed. they exposed many of the mechanisms (particularly political-economic) that cause the present mess. bear in mind that the u.s. is anything but a free market, particularly when it comes to healthcare, which is massively regulated and interfered with by the government. as one instance, observe how insurance companies are forbidden the perfectly rational cost-cutting measure of integrating across state lines. this massively raises costs. want abundance for all? then get rid of the present irrational structure of coercive controls. protect individual rights from violence and you’ll have an amazing world.
Michael -
The difficulty insurance companies have in “integrating across state lines” arises from the fact that regulating the industry is traditionally done at the state level. Surely you’re not advocating some federal-level (gasp!) “massive bureaucracy?”
Of course not - you’re advocating dropping regulations completely, secure in the touching faith that the “cost-cutting measures” that will follow will make health care so much more affordable for everyone and we’ll all be so much better off, with “abundance for all.” Yes.
I think you’d better spend some time researching the state of health and health care before there was all that icky government “interference.” You might particularly want to look into the origin of the phrase “snake oil salesman” and the history of patent medicines.
One other thing: You say “protect individual rights from violence.” Does such “violence” include the violence of racism and bigotry? Does it include the violence of discrimination in housing and employment?
Does it include the violence of seeing your child die because you’re too damn poor to afford to have a tooth pulled?
You write very well.