Health care is absolutely not a right

in Uncategorized | 30 responses

This is the fundamental philosophical difference between what I (and others) believe and the stance of the single-payer supporters. Thanks GruntDoc for linking to the money quote:

As with any good or service that is provided by some specific group of men, if you try to make its possession by all a right, you thereby enslave the providers of the service, wreck the service, and end up depriving the very consumers you are supposed to be helping. To call “medical care” a right will merely enslave the doctors and thus destroy the quality of medical care in this country, as socialized medicine has done around the world . . .

(via On The Fence Films)

Comments

Evan
Kevin, that would all be well and good, if there weren’t already a right to medical written into law in the US. If you really believe there is no right to health care, you should be pushing to repeal EMTALA, asking that people with no insurance not be responded to by 911 calls and pushing for the rights of doctors to commit malpractice.
Of course, this is not the case. Any 911 call has to be responded to regardless of insurance, and anyone who presents to an ER has to receive care regardless of insurance. So we have already decided the question of whether health care is a right or not and we can move on to the question of whether we deliver the care that right entails adequately or not.
To put your head in the sand and act as if we don’t already have that right under current law is absurd. Most especially it is absurd from someone who frets about getting sued and prays for tort reform with every 4th or 5th post. The underlying theory of all malpractice suits is … once again that people have a right not just to healthcare but a right to healthcare that meets the community standards of care.
Please, stop with the “there is no right to health care” unless you want to start going on about how ambulances should leave the dying by the side of the road, ER’s should turn away patients with chest pain and the fact that doctors can’t amputate the wrong limb with impunity is a national disgrace.
Anonymous
Finally, some reason on this blog. Nice post. I agree with Evan completely.
Anonymous
Please, stop with the “there is no right to health care” unless you want to start going on about how ambulances should leave the dying by the side of the road
You’re equating being humane and not leaving a dying man on the side of the road to the “right” to get a tummy tuck? I must of missed something. Probably the part about not taking extreme examples to “prove” a point by some absurd situation.
Anonymous
Sorry Evan, the issue of whether health care is a right was not settled by EMTALA or any other thoughtless and pandering unfunded mandate. Making a law does not make a “right”, unless we are amending the constitution. Even were that to be the case, you would still be under the burden of rationalizing how a positive right to resources (in this particular case, the highly developed skills and expensive material resources of others) can be as much a right as the negative rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution/BOR. It really is a fundamental philosophical problem, and no, it isn’t an issue settled, over and done. Glazing over the matter by bad legislation does not change that fact.
Health care is no more a right than good schools or crime-free neighborhoods, or clean water or clean air. None of those are natural rights, no matter how desirable they are.
So no, don’t expect there to be an end to objections to the false notion of Health Care As A Right, unless you are fully prepared to accept cheap food and sweatshop-facilitated cheap clothing, and rent controlled and price-capped cheap housing as rights too. “Health Care” is not an abstraction, it is other people’s property and other people’s labor, nothing more. If those things become your rights, then lets be honest. Either admit that what “right” means here is only a right to buy what another will freely sell or tell the world you have the right to be a thief.
Criminallopath
Too bad that you guys lost any moral high ground on the issue by colluding with the government through the implementation of the findings of the Flexner Report and the use of legislative feat to oligopolize vast swaths of the the health care market. Organized medicine made the deal with the Devil and now that the contract is due…
Anonymous
Kevin, your arrogance is unmatched by anyone. Why are you even a Doctor?
You consistently compare health care to material things. The whole damn world understands that you cannot go buy a new car or funiture without the finances to pay for them. Healthcare is totally different. First of all most people don’t WANT to receive it. They are ill and need to receive it. Second, we are not some third world country that should be allowing our poor to just rot and die. Of course that is what is happening here and you know it as well as i do. If YOU had your way many more would be doing so. So again, just why are you a doctor?
Anonymous
“Second, we are not some third world country that should be allowing our poor to just rot and die. Of course that is what is happening here and you know it as well as i do.”
Please point to a place where people are rotting here in the USA.
Have you people heard of Medicaid? In fact 1/3 of the 47 million people that are “uninsured” in this country are eligible to sign up for Medicaid but don’t. Maybe we should fix that first by somehow enforcing enrollment. The other third of the “uninsured” can pay for insurance, but don’t make it a priority. With this group we need to offer a barebones HDHP stripped of the all the lobbyists state mandated entitlements and again enforce enrollment. The final third of the “uninsured” do not qualify for Medicaid and do need help to purchase some sort of coverage. With this group we can offer means tested government vouchers to get them into the previously mentioned barebones HDHPs.
The fix is simple, and it does not require the entire country to be forced into a single payer government run healthcare nightmare, but all the lobbyists in state and federal government are muddying the water so badly that nothing will get done.
Evan
Since nobody but Criminal left a name to address I guess I will just address the general argument presented.
EMTALA did not establish a legal “right”, nor do the other things I talked about. But … if there is no “right” to healthcare, then EMTALA and 911 calls and malpractice suits make no sense at all.
Thus, if you believe as Kevin does, that there is absolutely no right to health care, then you ought to be pushing to repeal these things, along with Medicaid, Medicare, and state Medical Boards.
Now Criminal seems to be in favor of just that. Perhaps the other posters are as well. But I’m willing to bet Kevin isn’t. He doesn’t ever advocate for these positions and I doubt he would support them if there was a political constituency behind them.
In fact, if such a constituency existed the best way to prove that there was no “right to health care” would be to push for a federal constitutional amendment that stated clearly that although the declaration of independence speaks of a right to “life”, “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness”, this was in no way to be construed as a right to health care. I wonder how far such an amendment would get.
Anonymous
To the poster who thinks everyone can sign up for medicaid because they are eligible for it, you are wrong.
In many states now, to be eligible for medicaid you must prove disbility the same as you would to receive disbility and Medicare through social security. In fact many states use SS guidelines now for approving medicaid. this does NOTHING for the working poor in the country. You make your remarks so easy that its like you really believe them. Also if a person has more than 1,500.00 in assets they will not qualify for medicaid. Which means if you have your own home or a car then you automatically wont get it.
Those are the people who are dying for lack of medical care. They don’t qualify and are NOT eligible for medicaid. They can not afford medications and you are a fool if you think it isn’t happening.
Anonymous
“Thus, if you believe as Kevin does, that there is absolutely no right to health care, then you ought to be pushing to repeal these things, along with Medicaid, Medicare, and state Medical Boards.”
Not so fast. Disagreeing that health care is a “right” does not logically require that one oppose health care services, regulations or insurance as a privilege, or as a policy. There is a difference. What is allowed today as a privilege established as a policy–and not a “right”–can be withdrawn tomorrow as the needs of society and as the resources of society change. Providing Medicaid under legislation as a privilege to those that public policy deems eligible does not make those services a right. One can have a full range of services without any of them as a right, just as postal delivery and air quality control regulation are provided under policy without those being rights.
Evan
Postal delivery actually is enshrined in the constitution as one of the jobs of the government. It’s there in article I:
To establish post offices and post roads
So people have a constitutionally protected right to getting mail, but no right to medical treatment in an emergency?
Fact is, getting medical care in an emergency is widely recognized as a right in this country. Since we have recognized the right to care in extremis, it is perverse to assume such a right does not exist de facto if not de jure. Again, there does not seem to be a “let ‘em die” constituency in the US that is supporting the abolition of 911 and EMTALA.
Please, ask any EMT if they think people consider 911 a “privilege.” Since it is a right that people believe they already have, I suggest all of you anonymous commenters join Criminal in pushing for a repeal of these rights as they exist right now.
Okulus
Postal delivery enshrined? That’s beautiful.
No Evan, the Constitution does not establish postal services as a civil right. It merely describes those services as being the responsibility of the federal government, as opposed to the responsibilities of individual states. And that is not a constitutionally protected right to recieve mail. It is nothing of the kind.
Getting emergency services is not a right, unless you think having running water and trash removal as a right. They are simply publicly provided services (the kind provided by fire departments and publicly owned and administered EMS departments.) It gets trickier with hospitals and even more so the staffs of those hospitals. Often they are private institutions or even when not, their medical staffs are privately employed individuals. The relationship of the government to the hospital concerning the imposition of legally-mandated emergency medical services to the public is a complicated one, at turns regulator, financier and extortionist. To the private staff, it is more nakedly one of extortionist-by-proxy.
I have no doubts of the public’s expectations of hospitals and indirectly their staffs. They think themselves free to take what they want–not necessarily what they need–whenever they want, and without being inhibited as to the responsibility to pay. Of course that doesn’t mean things actually work out that way, but generally emergency services are provided first and matters of payment are relegated to the issues handled later, which in so many cases means never. But use, end entitlement to defer satisfaction to payment, and even abuse are circumstances of availability, that is still not a right to have what is otherwise not available at the expense of the public generally, and certainly not a right to take the labors and property of another or to hazard their confiscation without the freedom of the other party to refuse. So no, emergency privileges are just that, and not rights.
Your calling them rights is like the squatter who having moved into the house he doesn’t own demanding to receive mail there as well.
Evan
Okulus,
Thanks for leaving a name and a reasoned argument.
The fact is that the constitution provides that congress will make post offices available. If they are to be available, what possible use could they be if not to deliver mail? If the constitution provided that congress must make hospitals available … what would that imply?
The constitution doesn’t do this of course, but several laws including the ERISA and EMTALA make certain aspects of health care delivery mandatory for most areas of the health care market. Now these may be “squatter’s rights” but there are in fact certain legal rights that squatters do have. And to get rid of a squatter you have to go through a procedure. So, if Kevin and you genuinely believe there absolutely is no right to health care you oughta be pushing for the repeal of these things.
Now you may be legally correct about whether it meets the current standards for being considered a “constitutional right” but the fact that it is considered a right by virtually everyone in the US who is having an emergency is not something anyone is debating, so I assume that you agree that people do in fact consider it one, even if it is a “squatter’s right”.
Thus, if you believe as Kevin does that it ABSOLUTELY is not a right, then you should be working to reverse that perception.
In other countries where I’ve lived, there is no 911, there is no being seen in the emergency room unless you can pay, and people most definitely do not believe they have a right to such a thing.
The US could go back to that. You, Okulus, personally, in your state, could push for a constitutional amendment to the federal constitution that repealed the EMTALA. Nothing is stopping you.
Also I don’t know where you live but our 911 system is run mostly by a private ambulance system which makes a profit, yet they still have to answer all the calls and transport to the hospital all patients who request transport. Again, this is a de facto right and not a de jure right but if it’s absolutely wrong that people think this way, we should be pushing to abolish these things that give people that impression.
Doctors could push for the repeal of EMTALA the way they push for things like tort reform and push against Medicare pay cuts. They could lobby congress to repeal EMTALA. Yet they don’t. So … again I ask, why don’t they, if we assume that “health care is absolutely not a right”?
Anonymous
You could lobby for free mail delivery, and yet you don’t, even though it is (according to you) a right. Why not?
Evan
That’s because I think mail is objectively less important than health care. I wasn’t the one who brought up mail in the first place. I’m not arguing for free mail delivery but I bet if mail were unaffordable for 45 million Americans someone would be. But it says a lot about your reading comprehension skills or your biases, mr. anonymous, that you think I ought to.
Okulus
Evan:
How I particularly (or persons like me) choose to exercise my Constitutional right (a real one, this time, freedom of speech, assembly, petition of my representative) to oppose existing legislation or solicit new legislation has no bearing on whether my professional services or health care are rights to be claimed by others. That issue is not relevant. My labor and product is not the possesion of another by right by my decisions to exercise my own constitutional rights. Labor and goods are never the right of another to take, except as allowed by the law, and then only as a result of Constitutionally-protected due process. You can’t just steal your neighbor’s car because you think you really need to use it. I don’t need to be petitioning my government over and over to write ever more elaborate law in order to maintain my protection from car thieves. Your arguing that medical service is a right by the strength of habitual consumption is like the indigent man arguing he has right to be fed because he goes to a soup kitchen every day.
In my view EMTALA is bad law. It mandates services under the threat of withdrawal of funding for unrelated services, which is extortion, particularly given that the taxpayers are providing that funding. (No different than threatening to take away a state’s allocation for highway subsidies if that state fails to comply with an unfunded mandate regarding education). Certainly I have a right to vote for candidates who want to repeal EMTALA. But even if I didn’t, that does not make EMTALA any more a good law. And it doesn’t make expropriation of services a right.
So is health insurance a right? Of course not. It is neither a de facto nor de jure right. And neither is postal service or 911 ambulance service or sewage disposal. They are services, available to the public when the public chooses to pay for them, and the converse when not. Any one of them could be here today and gone tomorrow, unlike real rights, which are far more durable.
Evan
Okulus,
So what you are saying is pretty clear cut. I’m pretty sure that Kevin’s position is different from yours, and I’m also quite sure that a majority of Americans would not be interested in what you are selling. That being said, you are consistent and logical.
Just realize that under your belief set, a child with new-onset type I diabetes who is in a coma and could easily be rescued with a couple of days in the ICU and inexpensive insulin shots would be allowed to die if the child had no insurance. If you think that’s unlikely, it might be, but amortized over 40 million people, it’s a certainty. If EMTALA were abolished and 911 no longer existed a LOT more people would probably die sooner than they otherwise would have, and you think that’s a good thing. Not something you’d fight for evidently, but a good thing nonetheless. The only remaining question is whether Kevin agrees with that, and he’s quiet about this thread so far.
Okulus
Evan:
I can’t speak for the site host, and I don’t think you can either. What Kevin believes or supports is beside my point. If he thinks I’m unwelcome because he disagrees with me, well then that’s his privilege. When I write here, I guess I’m sitting on his porch, so to speak.
You chose an extreme example, but here goes. No, I don’t think there is a right to treatment of an acutely ill child, even here, any more than there is a right to kindness or to charity. We may impose moral imperatives upon ourselves to treat one another with kindness, and to treat needy persons, even strangers, with charity. We may choose to tax ourselves to provide a ready fund for those charitable acts and to make resources available to those we believe will benefit by their availability. There is no need to seek a root justification in a utility argument to validate these acts. But the fundamental quality that any of these benefits bestowed is that they are offered voluntarily as benefits of being in a community. They can and should be understood as privileges of plenitude. They are not rights of claim.
Please don’t make assumptions about what public services I would or wouldn’t support based on my disagreement over what makes a right. You are wildly overdrawing as you have in your example of the child. You are also presuming incorrectly that because I do not see EMS or hospital care as a right but as privileges of fortune that I think bad medical outcomes are good or acceptable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your tarring me with that brush is particularly dishonest and disgraceful.
Evan
Okul,
You said:
No, I don’t think there is a right to treatment of an acutely ill child, even here, any more than there is a right to kindness or to charity.
That means you think that a society that does not offer such a right is objectively better than one that does. Therefore you think that a society that does not mandate the care of a child in a diabetic coma is worse in some fashion than one that does.
If you think such a thing is a bad outcome, one that is worse than having a society that mandates health care, you would work to assure that no child ever died due to lack of necessary medical where it was available solely due to cost. That is pretty much the opinion of Americans as codified by the law of the land in EMTALA. You want to repeal EMTALA.
So … how in the world is it possible that I am “wildly overdrawing” and making assumptions. What did I say that was dishonest? I’m just pointing out what you support, which in the paragraph above your accusation of wild overdrawing and making assumptions you agree with.
You think that such a child may be lucky enough to get charity, but you would under no circumstances obligate anyone to offer such charity to any child they chose not to. You are writing this, yet you are accusing me of telling you what you think when I say the same thing.
If you don’t like the implications of what you support, you have the opportunity to explain how such a thing would:
(a) never happen if EMTALA was repealed
(b) be a good thing on balance even though a few people would die needlessly
or (c) be a dishonest example, presented by a person undermining you without addressing a single statement you consider dishonest.
That you chose to do the third suggests that you are unwilling to do the first or second. At any rate, the fundamental point is no longer being argued here. You think that EMTALA is a bad law. EMTALA gives Americans rights to emergency care by law.
My position that this is a de facto right to health care cannot be argued against and you’ve only marshalled your willingness to suggest that somehow people are complying with EMTALA out of the goodness of their hearts, which I strongly doubt.
I remain very curious about Kevin’s opinion on the repeal of EMTALA though.
Anonymous
Evan:
What do you do for a living?
curious
Anonymous
Evan:
Preferring a society that chooses to provide medical care to those in dire need while recognizing that those called on to provide that care in a timely fashion deserve fair (not merely what is available from meager budgets, or chance) compensation for providing that care does not require that I concede that health care is anybody’s right. It simply never is. Providing emergency care is the mark of a just and compassionate society–and a necessarily wealthy and advanced society– in our contemporary understanding. But that does not make an absolute right, nor is it a carte blanche to seize the labors and property of others to further that end, without compensation. Unfortunately with EMTALA, that is exactly what we have: an entitlement to take without compensation, which itself is unjust. In my view, Congress had no right to pass such a law without providing fair and prompt compensation to those who have to provide that care, the hospitals and their affiliated staff. Accepting the status quo is endorsing injustice merely because it satisfies our notion that a greater benefit results to someone else. We do it because it is convenient and because we get away with it. That is not acceptable.
I do not see any disconnect between a moral imperative to render assistance and the idea that health care is not a right. It is a notion as old as our country and was the driving force behind the establishment of the first hospitals in the United States.
Okulus
“That means you think that a society that does not offer such a right is objectively better than one that does. Therefore you think that a society that does not mandate the care of a child in a diabetic coma is worse in some fashion than one that does.”
Here is where I think you are incorrect: the notion of mandate. I do not think that a society that does not mandate the care of a child in a diabetic coma is necessarily worse than one that does.
We have now a society that sloppily makes those kinds of mandates, with little regard for how or who will have to provide those mandated services. Our ability to honor any such mandate is contingent on means that are assumed always available on demand when in fact they should not be assumed to be so.
And where these means are available, those imposing the mandates have not in turn assumed the responsibility for fair compensation to those compelled to provide those goods and services. It hardly matters whether the purpose is a lifesaving one or a complete waste, as long as full and timely compensation is not provided, and those in the position of providing have not at least some right of refusal, the injustice to the providers is the same. As things stand, with EMTALA, government has shirked its duty and rationalized its acts on the thinnest of utility arguments. And they have completely ignored the issue of justice.
sultan of swage
EMTALA can best be considered a tariff for the opportunity to practice what is-in my opinion-the noblest of professions in the country that has provided me with that opportunity. Most EPs such as myself would meerly like the government to come clean and abandon its role as extortionist vis-a-vis Medicare funding and take a stand; if the US is going to be in the medical screening and appropriate treatment or speedy transfer business they need to start accepting the financial responsibility for such mandated care.
Truth is, I have not yet met any EPs who would even consider not treating a patient if they needed help but were unfunded. Hell, I don’t even have a clue as to my patients’ insurance status until I have to find an admitting doc and have to call the correct physician based on their coverage (or lack thereof). I am not naive enough to believe a for-profit hospital system would ever allow itself to tip the budget into the red becasue of my or my colleague’s charitable practices but I work on an RVU system where I only make money on what the group collects. EMTALA may state that I have to screen the patient and provide a certain level of care, if warranted. But Hippocrates told me I had an even larger, nobler obligation long before I had even heard of EMTALA. We as a nation have decreed-through EMTALA-that it is the responsibility of a hospital to offer a minimum level of care to our citizens when they are at their neediest, regardless of ability to pay (assuming the use of ERs is limited to only true emergencies or what the layperson has determined to be a true or potentially true emergency; a shaky premise.) This is actually one of several examples of what makes ours a great society in that we as EPs accept this responsibility as our own, doing our best to give our neediest the best care possible using all that is available to us. Healthcare-as has been defined by the single-payer crowd- is not a right at all, much like it is not my right to deliver it. It is my privilege to practice medicine and it is a privilege to benefit from the labors of others, even if you really, really, really want or need what they have to give. The best example I can think of off the cuff is the tremendous expenses incurred at the end of life. Day after day, I respond to codes in the ICU that nearly always involve an elderly patient who-by all reasonable standards-had very little quality of life for previous days or longer while the hospital honored the family’s wishes to do all that was medically possible, utilizing a bed that could have been used for Evan’s DKA kid. (Now this part may sound uncomfortable but I am speaking in terms of The Big Picture.) I go to their bedside and push expensive drugs, utilizing expensive critical care nurses and RTs, allowing sick patients in the ER to build up and slip further into their respective pathologies, all the while knowing that-for so many of these patients I encounter-the return of a heartbeat may be the last thing they would have wanted, given the choice but, since the family’s wishes were made clear we do all that we can anyway. I am a tremendous proponent of elderly rights but I also believe in the humane treatment of our sick. Who exactly determines what is the scope of mandated care? The government? The patient’s family?
By saying “healthcare is a right”, exactly how much healthcare are you referring to? Lifesaving treatment that results in a worse quality of life than you would otherwise want to live with? Are we going to mandate advanced directives? For the kid in DKA, what if he has a bad outcome and his kidneys are shot? Do we mandate organ donation? What if your local ophthamologist is not a retina specialist and you have a detachment that requires urgent attention? Do we mandate the appropriate specialist fly out to treat you, neglecting their other patients and-in the EMTALA model-not getting compensated for their expertise but still assuming the significant liability?
The simplest rebuttal to whether health care is right or not is already well documented. Entire counties in the US do not have EMS systems or hospitals to serve its citizens, for reasons financial and logistical. This leaves thousands of Americans without access to healthcare in a timely or any other fashion. How do they exercise their “right” to health care, emergency or otherwise? No, the availabilty of healthcare services is determined by the responsibilities we have ascribed to those who decide they will provide them. I think we need to better define what constitutes “healthcare” as a nation, with reasonable expectations to what our society can afford and what we as physicians can provide.
As for EMTALA, I have no problem with my country telling me that it is my responsibility to help its citizens in their time of need. It would just be nice if they didn’t hold a gun to my head as they said it. The hungry man doesn’t go into a restaurant, take food from the oven, eat it, then demand the cook’s wallet before letting his hungry friends in to do the same. Isn’t food even more basic than healthcare?
Anonymous
“That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”
James Madison 1792
The point is that a physician is a private citizen with the same rights to life, liberty and property under the US Constitution as any other citizen. There is a huge and fundemental difference between SOCIETY deciding to provide emergent or even non-emergent services and society, via government fiat, requiring a subset of private citizens ( ie physicians) to care for these people without just compensation. The latter is undeniably enslavement and involuntary servitude which is expressly prohibited in the US Constitution.
Vincent
Anonymous
I just read the sultan’s post again. He said “But Hippocrates told me I had an even larger, nobler obligation long before I had even heard of EMTALA.”
This is a very common misconception, even among physicians. There is absolutely nothing in the HO that says that a physician has a moral obligation to take care of anyone. This is logical since that would be a positive right. Every positive right invariably results in the erosion of the rights of another. That is why the the United States was founded on negative rights. This is the reason for our preeminence in the world.
I would like to hear from the sultan regarding the Oath. What line in the Oath actually states that a person has a right to your services? What line even states you have a moral obligation to provide your services?
vincent
PODler
There are two reasons why you have a duty to care as a physician.
First, no one forces you to become one. Since this is true, positive rights are not in play. It’s just like being a soldier who volunteers–you accept certain duties as a result, often these are duties conflict with your other rights.
Second, medical education is subsidized by the taxpayers. Unless you pay for medical education at a private medical school, you already are obligated to perform services for the good of society because you have received a benefit from society.
Anonymous
there is no right to health care. the philosophical difference here is that the “right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness” is a right given to man BY NATURE and protected by the government, not given by the government. The government is a protector of rights, not a giver of rights. Therefore, the government declaring they are going to give you a right is a lie! They have no rights to give. Emtala is a bold act of thievery and if you look up the definition, in economics any product or service as a result of labor is “property.” Medical care is property, and, just like all private property laws in the united states, violence is being done. Emtala is simply eminent domain abuse. If the government says you have a right to housing, would you consider it fair that every hotel give up their rooms?
Anonymous
Medical Care is a service. Just like Legal Services are services. People who work in service industries expect to get paid for their services that is why we go into them. There are many ways to help humanity with out being a doctor. This notion that one has to be selfless to be a doctor is bunk. Just like your lawyer, I should be able to demand payment up front. Or you can go get your free services provided by the church run charity clinics which kinda equates to public defenders in the legal world.
How in the world did we ever survive in this evil evil country without EMTALA? Without forcing doctors and EMS providers to haul an able bodied 30 yr old with a 3 day rash to the ER while the 55 yr old diabetic sits at home having his heart attack waiting on that ambulance to get to him. Heaven forbid we tell the rash person that there are more important calls than her rash. BTW in this case the wife of the MI victim raised caine about the 15 minute wait her husband had to endure while the ambulance dropped the rash off and went back for him. I should have taken her to the room where the itchy scaly person sat texting on her cell phone waiting on her free pregnancy test (the real reason she was there) and let her know the real reason her husband sat dying for 15 minutes. Thats what we need in this country…social justice. Then none of this would be an issue. I’d like to see the real pain patients get a hold of the drug seekers. I’d buy that on pay per view.
Anonymous
If any of you are Christians. What would Jesus do? While the dominant humans in his time threw the lepards out the door, Jesus helped these poor souls. During his time, Jesus believed health care was a right.
I am a Physician, the reason I became a physician was to help the sick, not to see how fat my pocket could get. The money I make right now is great, I am blessed. A socialized system would not make me poor, it just wouldn’t make me filthy rich. A socialized system would give me a greater job security. Yes the volume of patients would increase, but I would be doing what I dreamed of doing when I was a young boy.
This takes on a very personal note for me. My mother was turned away from treatment before EMTALA and died. She went to the E.D. with a c/o “severe headache” since we were poor she could not afford the hospital bill, she was turned away. She died in her sleep that night with probably a subdural hematoma (I am assuming that is what it was, from what I know now).
Is this happening today? I would answer yes. There is someone right now who has these same symptoms but will not go to the hospital because they can not afford the bill, and yet another young child will become parentless. And yet Americans are okay with this.
As a physician, I do not want another child to endure what I had at a young age. I would have loved to have my mother witness many things in my life…my marriage…graduating med school…my two children (who are also physicians).
It is time for Americans to wake up! Americans MUST see that they are not the only person living in this great country. This is not a problem in any other advanced country right now. Other countries are not as narcissistic as we Americans are.
I can say this now, since I worked from nothing into a good medical practice.(and I am near retirement). Majority of the individuals I meet that are against a socialized system came from priveledged families, and are “spoiled brats”. Sorry to offend the very few who are not. Once these “spoiled brats” make there first dollar, they are scared someone else needs it more than they do. Like dad and mom tried to teach you when you are young, “you must share”.
I believe we all have a mission i nthis world, and it is not to see how big our wallets can get.
Dr. Dominique Vituli
Anonymous
Dr. Vituli, I’m sorry for what happened to your mother, but healthcare being a right or a privilege should not include emotions. Yes, as human beings we have morals and the majority of medical students are becoming doctors to help people, not make money. As a medical student I always say, ‘if I was focused on being rich, I’d be a plumber’.
The importance of considering healthcare a privilege and not a right feels mostly based on the freedom of the doctor. If it becomes a right, then the doctor may lose their complete ability to decide what is best for the patient (http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm).
The closest thing to social medicine that I have heard that works is a law that was passed in Massachusetts requiring all to have some form of insurance. The poor had free insurance and those that could afford it were fined if they did not have it. I like that system, it’s socialized medicine without hospitals having to close and doctors suffering.
When it comes to healthcare workers in general, I feel it is extremely important to pay attention to their needs as well. If they are over worked, underpaid, and overall being taken advantage of, they won’t be as efficient. In an emergency situation this is of utmost importance.
I’m currently in a 3rd world country and would like to point out that people here have morals, medical students and doctors pay for patients that can’t afford the services many times in hospitals. When did we start believing that the government needed to instill morals in us, aren’t we already supposed to be aware of them?
I have never been spoiled in my life, but I do not want the socialized medical system in Sweden. I heard plenty first hand horror stories of that medical system. Also with the “free” medical services comes high taxes and a decline in a doctor-patient relationship (Sweden). Frankly, I like seeing the same doctor everytime and being allowed to choose what doctor I want to see. Not all doctors are as good as others. And not all great doctors are money hungry. If the US does something similar to Massachusetts I hope it is by state.
I realize I don’t have quotes from the Constitution and law terminology to make my words stand out more, but I think my opinion is valid nonetheless. However, since I’m a persistent second-guesser I’ll continue to read more on the issue. I think in order to make an opinion, one must really look at both sides and then at the end, make their final decision. So far mine is still at healthcare being a privilege, not a right, but I’ve only read through 8 documents and websites, maybe a few more will change my mind, but I highly doubt it.
-SH-