What will we have to give up if we go to universal coverage? That’s something that isn’t covered by the media:
You might think that providing universal health care coverage is going to solve a big health care problem in America. If that’s what you think, I’m guessing that you have not delved into the matter in any great detail . . . My first eye-opening discovery was that access to new, life-saving (and extremely expensive) cancer drugs is much faster in America than anywhere else in the world. It might make sense to deny Americans access to these life saving drugs and to use the money saved to provide health insurance to the poor, but the point is that there are tradeoffs to be made. Once you come to appreciate that fact, the needle on your outrage detector will come down off its maximum value. I read somewhere that Michael Moore thinks that France has the best health care system in the world. Maybe, but I don’t think he’d hold that view if he lived in France and had cancer (and was told that they pay for their number-one system by not paying for the extremely expensive drugs that could save his life).My second surprise was that the lack of access to regular health care in America was largely due to factors unrelated to health care coverage, which means that providing universal coverage won’t address that issue in any way.
Related posts:
- The American Cancer Society and the uninsured
- Uninsured vets
- Can universal health coverage be sustained long-term?
- Stossel in the WSJ
- Many uninsured choose to stay that way
- The price of covering everyone
- How Obama’s health reform will hurt Canada
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{ 4 comments }
Everything said in that post is true. However, if you have no insurance at all, you will die of your cancer.
Ind Uro:
I am sorry but that is the second time you have made an utterly clueless statement about insurance/lack of cancer care.
1: People often make the effort to qualify for their states medicaid system after a cancer diagonsis. Often they just have not taken the time to fill out the paperwork/get qualified or don’t have the knowledge on how to fill out the paperwork and need some help.
2:Those evil pharma company’s have low income/hardship progams that will give drug (even the newest chemo) at a discounted rate or free. The paperwork can be a pain for the doc and the patient’s need to show evidence of financial hardship.
The system is not perfect and people can and do fall through the cracks (which they often do EVEN WITH INSURANCE). But please, next time make the effort to understand the issue. You don’t see me pontificating about urology billing/hardship issues because I don’t know them
onc doc
Onc Doc
You miss the point. You will die of your cancer if you are uninsured because you showed up in my ER and I diagnosed you with the unresectable Stage IV horrendioma (you pick) that might have been diagnosed earler through access to routine screening care.
I’ve diagnosed several incurable cancers in the ER in the last couple of months. All were uninsured patients with no real access to primary care.
shadowfax
Not to disagree with you, shadowfax — because I don’t — but having insurance and access to primary care doesn’t mean you’ll make use of it.
Granted, if you’ve got some type of cancer growing inside of you, you probably would.
But then sometimes it’s more comfortable to keep your head in the sand, too, so I guess playing the “what if” game has too many possible outcomes to be useful.
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