Originally posted by Moonsouljah
If you are in favor of Free Health care
-have you ever heard the expression "there is no such thing as a free lunch?"
You bet. Have you noticed that it's only opponents of health care claiming that people think it's going to be a "free lunch"? I've yet to see a
proponent make this sort of claim.
-if you have, do you feel this applies to the health care debate?
-if yes, at what cost is free health care worth it? Who pays for it? and would this exempt it from falling under the "free"
category?
Of course it applies. It would be paid for by American taxpayers. it's not exactly a mystery, you know. Again, the only people trying to call it
"free" are opponents of the idea who are trying to frame the argument.
At what cost? Well, let me give you an example of something that happened to me.
When I was younger - just out of the parents' house - I was working part-time at a jerky factory. I had just started, and being part time, wasn't
eligible for the benefits package, so I didn't have any form of health insurance. I was there a few weeks, when I got attacked by a dog. The sucker
damn near rippled my nose off of my face, and I had to go to the ER to have it sutured, then I had to be shuffled out of town to get some rhinoplasty
done to make it resemble a nose again. Naturally I was not working that day, nor for the three days I was in the hospital, or for three more days I
was on these gnarly pain meds, and I missed work the day hte stitches were taken out, too.
So what's the net cost? Eight days that I did not get a paycheck.
I had to pay the cost of the ER trip, three day stay in a hospital, anaesthetics, and of course the plastic surgery, out-of-pocket.
That first day my floor manager called someone in to fill for me. That being short notice, that person got time and a half pay.
For the other seven days I worked, a different dloor manager just went on without me, resulting in an overall loss of efficiency in the workplace as
other employees had to work harder to fill my place.
The hospital also lost money because I couldn't pay the total bill without succumbing to other health woes like, say, starvation or hypothermia from
a lack of heat, or the like They forgave my remaining debt the next christmas, and while I appreciate it, I realize they lost over a thousand dollars
in so doing.
I'm sure that between myself and my employer, this went into five-digit territory in money lost because of what was, in all honesty, a freak
incident. I didn't PLAN for a doberman to assault me in my front yard. had I known who the owner was, I would have naturally dragged them through
every court I needed to to pay damages (and then some - even more money someone's losing!)
With a public option, the price tag would be the same. However the cost would be spread out over thousands of people - a few pennies from him, fifty
cents from her, so on and so forth. This has a net effect of saving my money and my employers money, granting us increased buying power,
without
seriously diminishing the buying power of others. Additionally the costs I had to pay were inflated due to the distortion effect the insurance
industries have on the marketplace of healthcare. The same procedure costs less in total for a person and their insurance company, than it does for an
insured person.
An illness or accident can
seriously screw up a person's economic standing. When this happens, it affects the entire network of producer and
consumer. when lots of people are unable to pay for the care they need, you get two effects - one, you either get unhealthy people i nthe workplace
which is obviously unsafe and inefficient, and two, you get people who have these large debts to hospitals and doctors, who very often never see a
dime of it. This is an obvious problem as well.
A healthcare safety net, a single-payer public option, won't be free. But i'm reasonably certain it will end up costing less for everyone than the
current situation does - imagine how far your insurance payments will drop if there's actual market competition, for starters!
I don't (currently) have the right to be treated by the world's best team of doctors 24/7 nor would I expect that right.
Obviously you're not Cuban!
I do however have the freedom to attain such lavish health care through the pursuit of my own happiness. I think I'd have make alot of money
in a free market first but you hopefully get my point. So do you (a Pro-free health-care person) think of health care as a right and what drawbacks
can you think of by doing so?
Health care is definitely a right. Can you really tell me that someone
deserves to die of a treatable illness or injury because they're poor?
What do you say to the homeless fellow with a concussion and internal hemorrhaging due to being targeted by a bunch of hoodlums out on a "bum
bashing" kick? "Sorry, you must be this rich for treatment"?
Now this may look like an appeal to emotion, but let's be honest, it does have a place here. Is it in any way conscionable to tell people with little
money that they do not deserve to have treatment for their health woes? Is that the sort of society that we want to think of when we go "America...
*&@! YEAH!"
The drawback of enumerating it as a right is pretty easy - how far does it go? Health care, to me, obviously implies care for your health, not your
vanity. If you want larger breasts, a harder erection, more hair, less hair, or you want to slim from a size 3 to a size 0, well, get a job and buy
your own cosmetic crap. On hte other hand if you got your face caught in a car explosion, or if you need your fat siphoned out so you don't suffocate
when you sleep, I could see that covered (in the latter case I would say that you have to pay to have your blubber refined into heating fuel, but
hey). we can expect several court cases where people are claiming their elective procedures are necessary for their health.
But then we have the same sort of people arguing that the 2nd amendment entitles them to own a personal fighter jet, too. So calling it a right
doesn't actually seem any more problematic than our other many rights.
[edit on 5-11-2009 by TheWalkingFox]
[edit on 5-11-2009 by TheWalkingFox]