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Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

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Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#61
post #11

Human Rights Declaration: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." ...and Health Care is how one stays alive, therefore health care should be a right.

If I truly have such an absolute right to life, then the State should expend infinite resources in order to attempt to keep me alive forever. No expense should ever be spared.

That is the state of things:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90611&page=1

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-03-01/news/960301023...

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#62
post #60
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So was I just imagining all the people repeating the line that 'no one should die because they can't afford health care'? Or do you not see how that condition also exists in all the countries that do it right? >The US is still the world's economic superpower, but it's health care system is rated below Dominica and Costa Rica. What is this replying to? What did I say that contradicted this or suggested otherwise, or m…

That low ranking is related to the first thing you're saying. It's what drives advocates of national health care, not the idea that nobody will die. When people are talking about deaths of people who can't afford health care, they're talking about people who don't have the resources to ever get care, the people who don't catch things in the early stages when they're easily treatable and find out too late that their c…

Those are all great, subtle distinctions to make. They're also completely different arguments from, and not at all conveyed by "lol poor people die from lacking health care in the US but not Europe".

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#63
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. The two industries aren't even remotely close to be able to make a comparison like that. Why not let healthcare operate as a free(er) market?

Because then you get to spend $300 on an Epi-Pen compared to (an already outrageous) $80 or so in the UK due to "patents" you may say that patents are crimping the "free" market but who is really going to vote to delete those from health care ? And even if they were removed, there are many other ways the big companies will stifle competition to keep profits high. Sometimes something bigger than a corporation needs to…

Isn't the Epi-Pen an example of what happens when a market isn't free? IIRC they have a monopoly provided by...the government.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#64
The government pays farmers to burn their crops, as to destroy competition and raise prices. The government, with the ACA, taxes insurance companies great amounts and uses that money to pay for the government care; the quality of the company's care goes down, then.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#65
I know everyone's busy re-iterate the usual health care talking points, but I this part interesting: McArdle says that she went on to a British talk show to talk about NHS and Obamacare, and the host and opponent both refused to deny that NICE does what it actually does: a CBA on treatments and recommends for/against them to the NHS.

(Obama tried to set up IPAB to do the same thing.)

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#66
post #65

I know everyone's busy re-iterate the usual health care talking points, but I this part interesting: McArdle says that she went on to a British talk show to talk about NHS and Obamacare, and the host and opponent both refused to deny that NICE does what it actually does: a CBA on treatments and recommends for/against them to the NHS. (Obama tried to set up IPAB to do the same thing.)

Does she say what the host and opponent claimed NICE do instead of cost benefit?

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#67
post #66
post #65

I know everyone's busy re-iterate the usual health care talking points, but I this part interesting: McArdle says that she went on to a British talk show to talk about NHS and Obamacare, and the host and opponent both refused to deny that NICE does what it actually does: a CBA on treatments and recommends for/against them to the NHS. (Obama tried to set up IPAB to do the same thing.)

Does she say what the host and opponent claimed NICE do instead of cost benefit?

I couldn't find a mention of it. Here's the part:

>>...Britain had achieved cost-effective treatment for everyone, at the cost of some people missing very expensive treatments that might help them. I was rather congratulating myself on this answer, because NICE is beloved of health wonks everywhere; Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is an attempt to sort of replicate it. Pointing out something the British health system can do that the American system can’t, and doing so in dryly factual tones, seemed like a good way to endear myself to the British audience.

>>The other guest, a British health official, interrupted to basically accuse me of lying; the British health system, he said, did no such thing.

>>Now I reiterate: I had not called NICE a death panel, or said that it was bad; I had simply described what NICE does, which is keep the NHS from blowing its budget on very expensive treatments that deliver relatively little value per pound spent. You can read NICE describing what NICE does on its website; the description is not significantly different from the one I gave. Being told that this was flat out wrong was surreal. Things got even more surreal when I began again to explain what NICE does, thinking that perhaps I had been unclear, and the host interrupted me and said something like “As you know, that’s false.”

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#68
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. The two industries aren't even remotely close to be able to make a comparison like that. Why not let healthcare operate as a free(er) market?

Because then you get to spend $300 on an Epi-Pen compared to (an already outrageous) $80 or so in the UK due to "patents" you may say that patents are crimping the "free" market but who is really going to vote to delete those from health care ? And even if they were removed, there are many other ways the big companies will stifle competition to keep profits high. Sometimes something bigger than a corporation needs to…

It's not just patents but regulations.

Any Epi-Pen competitor has to be FDA aproved, that takes years of investment.

The government the gets to decided if the product gets to consumers.

It just recently killed a competitor so Epi-Pen can raise prices.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#69

This is absolutely spot on. Health care is not a right, neither is education, food, or access to the internet. These are all things that people at some point or another have claimed as "inalienable human rights". There is always a cost benefit analysis here. Should we perform this extremely expensive treatment to give somebody a few days in agonizing pain, or maybe save a few dozen other people with a simple, straigh…

> Should we perform this extremely expensive treatment to give somebody a few days in agonizing pain, or maybe save a few dozen other people with a simple, straightforward procedure?

Does the current system in the US evaluate that?

We could also go back to feudalism, people accross history and the world have gained rights against the wealthy minority, and I think healthcare for everyone should be something US citizens fight for now.

(It's a bit of a marxist reading of history, but in this case it works)

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#70
From the UN Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 25.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/inde...

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