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Honestly though, how much more expense do you think we should be expected to bear? He already meets his annual out of pocket maximum every single year, and it's often a struggle to pay those expenses as it is. We make more than the median household income for our city (which is higher than the US median income) but we have little to show for it because so much is going to pay for medical care. We have no car. Three people living in a one bedroom. Very little in savings. How much more of the burden could we realistically shoulder?
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People should not die because they could not get health care. Just as justice should be blind, so must health care. If we CAN fix you, we SHOULD. This is what I believe to be true and is the moral compass that guides me on this matter.
My father-in-law was diagnosed with brain cancer two months ago. Without any treatment, he would be dead right now. He has had chemo and radiation. With this treatment, we hope he makes it through Xmas. Total cost for letting him spend another Xmas with his family? $1,000,000 and counting. Two months, $1,000,000. Hard for me to imagine, but he has a file that is six inches thick with all of the bills. Luckily, he has great insurance and is well off, so he gets to live a while longer. I am happy for this. Many are not so fortunate and would be dead. That is not right. Why should he live and others with the exact same issue die? Who decides that? A bean counter? How many people die each year because they could not afford the health care that could have saved their life? One study shows it's 26,000 every year.
The question is not "should we save everyone?", but "how can we afford to save everyone?". I'm sure the founders of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid had no idea how these programs, that were implemented with the highest moral foundations, could end up bankrupting the entire nation. That is what will happen with ACA. 50 years from now, the USA will not be able to afford the subsidies required to keep all of these social programs afloat, regardless of how the cost is apportioned. There is NOT enough money to go around to pay for all of these programs, even if everyone gave all of their money to Uncle Sam. Let's put a 100% tax on all income over $51,000 (the average US income in 2012). Would that be enough to pay for all of these social programs? Probably not. Total income in the US in 2012 was $13.4T. Total government spending (federal, state, local) was $6.2T. The government spends nearly half of our income for us already.
So, given these parameters, how do we solve the problem of funding the right to live? Let's look at those 26,000 people that will die this year because they couldn't afford health care. What if we subsidized their care at $1M each. 26,000 x $1M = $26B. That's a drop in the $14T government spending this year, so this should be easy. Pass an emergency bill and save these people. If only that's how it worked, right? The real problem is the outrageous cost of health care. I don't think there is enough money to save everyone in the current system.
I don't have the answer to this problem and to be honest, cannot even imagine an answer. I will simply rely on my moral compass to guide me through the morass of political rhetoric. No one should die because they could not get health care.
Tom
On edit:
What if there were a website that listed everyone that needed health care to live and everyone could log in and donate money or care to save them? Make it morbid by drawing a line and everyone below the line will die without help. And we, as a society, decide who lives and dies, in real time? Crowd funding the right to live. Not an original idea: http://www.crowdfundhealth.org
But they didn't include the list with the line. Might be a little too morbid.Last edited by corn18; 11-20-2014, 01:20 AM.Comment
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