Do you think that the tax payers should pay for a lung cancer patient that is still smoking? Or a person who needs a liver transplant who is still drinking or doing drugs? Should you have to pay for this?
Mark
Favorite Answer
I watched Obama's speech and most of it scared me. I would love to have health care that didn't deny you because of pre-existing conditions and such. However, that is impossible without raising prices. I think the best thing is to not touch the insurance plans that are already in place, but to create a new one as an option to choose from. Then you can make this one not deny people because of pre-existing conditions and such. If this works successfully then people will naturally come to it. If it doesn't work on its own without messing with the healthcare already in place, then it obviously fails and should be replanned.
Baa Baa
They don't give liver transplants to people that are actively drinking or using drugs. For a liver transplant, they require at least 6 months of proven sobriety before they will even begin to consider you as a candidate. They want to make sure that the recipient is committed to changing their behavior and lifestyle.
To actually pick and choose who gets help from their behavior is just not possible. That would get so out of control since where do you start and where would you stop. It just would go on and on until probably no one would get insured unless you were super healthy. I believe we have to accept the cost since we just can't start picking and choosing who we will let live and who we will let die. Innocent people would end up getting caught in that such as a crack addicted pregnant woman as an example. Do you let the baby die and give her no treatment because she is a drug addict? See what I mean when I say who do you cut off. The whole thing would turn into one big mess. I think we are better off doing it the way we do now.
TAT
If I can buy insurance after I get sick, why would I buy insurance when I am healthy. As for lifestyle illnesses, I don't mind. 100 million dollars is spent every year providing free treatment to AIDS patients in the US. Type two diabetes is a lifestyle illness but I think it should be covered. Traumatic brain injuries in athletes as well as other injuries are covered and those are related to lifestyle. IF we quit covering lifestyle related conditions, then we need to quit paying for treatment of STDs and pregnancy.
Daisy
not all preexisting conditions are brought on by personal abuses. Wouldn't it be great if preventative measures were taken instead of the Ins. corp wait till your almost dead approach.
cancer patients refused care because an earlier case of acne???
Elwood Blues
Lets take a look at the countries that do have universal health care. How long is their life expectancy, and what are their costs? Perhaps it will surprise you to learn that in the rest of the developed world, where they all have universal care, life expectancies are slightly longer (2.3 years in Canada, 1.9 years in France) and costs are WAY lower.
In the table below, im = infant mortality and L = life expectancy. See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html for mortality and life; see http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf for costs.
United States -- im= 6.4, L= 78.0, cost $7290, 16.0% of GDP
Canada --------- im= 4.6, L= 80.3, cost $3895, 10.1% of GDP
Austria -------- im= 4.5, L= 79.2, cost $3763, 10.1% of GDP
United Kingdom -- im= 5.0, L= 78.7, cost $3895, 8.4% of GDP
Denmark ------ im= 4.5, L= 78.0, cost $3362, 10.4% of GDP
Finland ------- im= 3.5, L= 78.7, cost $2840, 8.2% of GDP
France -------- im= 4.2, L= 79.9, cost $4763, 11.0% of GDP
Germany ------ im= 4.1, L= 79.0, cost $3527, 10.4% of GDP
Greece -------- im= 5.3, L= 79.4, cost $2727, 9.6% of GDP
Italy ----------- im= 5.7, L= 79.9, cost $2686, 8.7% of GDP
Norway ------- im= 3.6, L= 79.7, cost $4763, 8.9% of GDP
Spain --------- im= 4.3, L= 79.8, cost $2671, 8.5% of GDP
Sweden ------- im= 2.8, L= 80.6, cost $3323, 9.1% of GDP
Switzerland --- im= 4.3, L= 80.6, cost $4417, 10.8% of GDP
USA has 36 days longer life expectancy than these two countries!
Ireland ------- im= 5.2, L= 77.9, cost $3424, 7.6% of GDP
Portugal ----- im= 4.9, L= 77.9, cost $2150, 9.9% of GDP
Some folks blame our high costs on malpractice insurance. But the numbers don't support that. Including legal fees, insurance costs, and payouts, the cost of the suits comes to less than 1.5 percent of health-care spending. See http://www.insurance-reform.org/pr/AIRhealthcosts.pdf and http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm Along those lines, it's interesting to note that a number of states already have "caps and tort reform" yet the insurance companies have not lowered the cost of malpractice insurance in those states.
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