Surgery VS Ransom
 

You need a heart transplant or you'll die. The heart transplant costs $250,000, and you don't have health insurance.

Is this any different than someone putting a gun to your head and demanding $250,000 to not pull the trigger? If it's different, how?

The guy with the gun is doing it to you. A better analogy would be if you're hanging off the side of a cliff and a passer-by wants $250000 to pull you up.

not even that. it woudnt cost the guy 250k to pull your ass out of danger.

If you have a bad heart, you die. If you have 250K to spare, you live. no ransom. just no communism, either.

Yeah man. Shit happens. Life's hard. Get a helmet. I don't think its very comparable at all, in my opinion.

I think Happy Monkey's analogy is better.

I will never understand how a wealthy nation can accept health inequality within its borders. A nation which can afford to ensure its citizens have access to the best medical care and chooses not to, in my view fails its citizens. I include my own nation in this. We are currently failing our citizens by allowing health inequalities. In the ward I live in, the average life expectancy is ten years greater than that of the people who live in the ward I represent as a councillor. The distance between them is four miles. Four miles and ten years difference. Babies born four miles from my home are almost twice as likely to die before they reach their first birthday, than babies born on my street. Health inequality affects every part of life and death.

If we make all health care equal, then as a political decision we have to mandate what the limit of care is. We can't provide everything to everyone without limits. If everyone gets the same basic health care, where does innovation come from? Health care is going to be limited by the state or by economics either way can be seen as unfair. We're in the midst of a similar attempted leveling in American public education. National standards are taking the individual out of the picture much as national health care attempts to ignore individual difference. There is no perfect answer and right now Americas public/private health care hybrid manages to hit that sweet spot where nobody gets decent care.

Not true. The wealthy get excellent health care.

True. The extremely wealthy are getting good care.

There was a news item last week about this black doctor who chose to work in a hospital close to the low income neighborhood in which he grew up.

The number of women there who were dying from breast cancer appalled him; most did not seek treatment early because of lack of money and insurance.

In a day where early detection of breast cancer should be accessible to every woman it is a disgrace. After all, think of all the money saved by smashing our boobs in a vise when an ultrasound is not only less painful it's more accurate.

How about if it was your kid, and you had no health insurance?

Do you think it's communism to help someone who is truly in need, just to survive?

Oh I just hate it when people say that. Do your beliefs, morals, convictions, whatever, go right out the window when your own family is involved??? Yuk.

So you are morally convinced that the poor should be left to die?

Why not? Leaves more 'stuff' for the more deserving. :cool:

Yes, of course, I mean obviously.... that's exactly what I said isn't it? :rolleyes:

I'd suggest thet she's just as convinced of that as you are that the State needs to decide who dies.