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Originally Posted by Bitman
Personal responsibility is the only way to keep costs under control; any kind of government plan is fundamentally broken. Yet many other countries have some form of socialism, so I wonder -- What am I missing?
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Because there is an inherent understanding around the world that medicine is a different beast. If someone wrecks their car and has no insurance, boo hoo for them we say, now you have no car. You must suffer the consequences of your actions, and rightly so. If someone is hurt and has no insurance, as a society we (and most others) say we can't simply let them die for their mistakes, those consequences are too great for what is essentially a sin of greed (not wanting to shell out for insurance--and I know people will jump in and say "it's not that they don't
want to, they just can't afford it; but unless they're completely homeless and unemployed, the reality is they could "afford" it, just at a drastically reduced standard of living that understandably no one wants to endure.)
It is a reality that we are going to end up providing at least a base level of care for the people who choose not to take personal responsibility. So many countries have decided to remove the choice from their hands, and force "responsibility" on them in the form of mandated programs and taxes. Is that a better system than we have? I don't know, I've never experienced a socialized program, and really what everyone wonders in these scenarios is "will it be better for
me?" As a middle-class family who already shells out a pretty decent but not absurd amount for our coverage, I suspect our personal situation is going to stay pretty much the same no matter what the system is. It's the people at either extreme who will feel the effects of it.