People aren't dying because of a lack of insurance, they are dying because they fail to take action to improve their own health. It's not about insurance.
Its' about lifestyle insurance. And that means exercise can do more for your health than all the insurance your government can buy. Lay witness to this VA study. Remember the VA? That much touted socialized delivery of care for which we should all model after because of its great quality? Well, you can't blame lack of access for these striking numbers from a VA study:
You see, we spend all our time and energy figuring out how to insure everyone. It's not about insurance. It's about healthy living. Almost half the blacks died despite all the insurance in the world. Because they failed to act for their own benefit.
Just a simple observation.....100% of us are going to die. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no matter how much we work on healthy living, we are all going to leave this vale of tears. So making assumptions that "good living" will prevent that simply isn't going to fly. So instead of "end-of-life" issues occurring today for those in good shape, it will catch up with them 5,10, or 15 years later. But it WILL catch up
ReplyDeleteMeh, I don't think anyone is arguing that people don't die from lifestyle way more often than from lack of insurance. The thing is, dying because you smoked a pack a day for 20 years is your own damn fault. Dying because your insurance didn't kick in in time for that surgery you needed seems less like an issue of personal responsibility, especially in this economy when you can lose your job with little notice, be out of work for quite a while, and paying for COBRA or private insurance means losing your apartment or not eating. I think homelessness and starvation are pretty big risk factors, don't you?
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, people are always going to die because they are fat, or use drugs, or whatever. I personally don't even think any government health care plan should cover conditions we bring on ourselves, at least not in full. The ethical problem arises when people are dying because they catch pneumonia, or can't afford their insulin. Or when they are born with a preexisting condition and will never be able to get insurance. Or when they have a mental illness and get stuck in a vicious cycle-- they can't pay for care, so they don't get care, so they can't work, so they don't get insurance, so they can't pay for care...
OH YEAH!?!?!?!
ReplyDeleteWhat about Lou Gehrig????
Frank, M.D.
But people do die from a lack of insurance because insurance isn't a guarantee. It "insures" nothing when you can be dropped if you lose your job or age out of your parents program, etc.
ReplyDeleteSaw recently on Frontline where a young woman was diagnosed with Lupus in college. To make a long story short, she aged out of her parents' insurance and couldn't get the help she needed to keep her disease in check. $900,000 was spent on surgeries at the end of her life to try to save her. It didn't work.
So, yes people die of their bad choices, but plenty of people don't make bad choices and have trouble anyway. And don't forget that those bad choices have benefited someone whether it be a tobacco company, a government in the form of extra sin taxes, or a junk food company (whose ingredients are highly subsidized by our agricultural policy).
It would be pretty complicated to sort out who "deserved" treatment.
A lot of people went to medical school to care for the "unfortunate innocents." There are out there.
ReplyDeleteHospitalists are supposed to take care of sick people. We can and should educate the patients on what they can do to not get sick in the future but we take all comers.
That mean a lot of people who made sub-optimal choices and far too many who did everything right and got bad diseases because of bad luck.
But insurance helps provide care, which prolongs life. A healthy lifestyle prolongs life. Ideally, patient should have both but if I'm already at the treatment (and not prevention) phase of a bad disease, I think my insured pts have more options availible.
It makes no sense to me that we can transplant a 50 year old teacher but not a 23 year old medical student.
Thank You !
ReplyDelete