Should American Healthcare Be Rationed?
Some say Americans use too much healthcare, that even if reform is achieved, universal access should not mean unlimited access. Tough choices must be made. Others worry that the most needy or least able to fight for themselves will be the ones left waiting, or dying.
Edited by Steve St. Angelo
Yes
No one can fail to be moved by heartbreaking stories of people suffering and unable to get
By Michael Tanner
Senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
healthcare they want or need. But compassion is a sentiment, not a policy.
We tend to talk about healthcare in the philosophically abstract. "Is healthcare a right or a privilege?" goes the refrain. In reality, it is neither. Healthcare is a commodity—and a finite one at that. There are only so many doctors, hospitals, and, most important, money to go around. After all, every dollar spent...
No
When people discuss "end-of-life care," they often invoke scenarios meant to
By Laura Hershey
National advocate for the rights of the handicapped
sound ominous: tubes, breathing machines, physical dependency. I'm not scared by those images, having lived for 46 years with increasing reliance on technological and human support. A ventilator aids my breathing. Personal care assistants bathe, dress, and feed me. I operate my wheelchair by blowing into a tube. And my life is far from over. Of course, none of us can know for sure, but I plan on being around for a while....
What do you think?
Reader Comments
forum on healthcare, August 2009
Page 21, I notice the subtitle here is VALUE OF LIFE NOT FOR OTHERS TO SET and I am well aware that Laura Hershey has strong feelings that no one should decide whether she should live or die except herself. But, if the "value of life is truly not for others to set" then why does the Catholic Church and other groups become so aggravated when those of us that would like to have the right to end our lives in a reasonably pleasant way do everything in their power to make sure we are not allowed to do so. And I put Laura Hershey right there with the Catholic Church.
As to rationing health care, of course it is going to be rationed. It already is rationed. There may not be a "rationing board" but procedures are rationed either by insurance companies, money, availability, etc.
Health care or Drug care?
Mr. Andrew Baum of WI
I agree with you,
However Be careful you do not let a weak mind weaken yours. I traveled many years on freight trains and worked where ever I ended up and saw many ask for hand outs. There are many reasons why people end up the way they do. for one thing we take more drugs than we need.
read whats below this reply we need to work with each patient and sometimes there relatives who are not specialist but might help in giving the help the patient needs not what the patient wants
Health care has become drug care Doctors have become prescriber's, Its all about drugs nowadays not health. I have not been to A doctor for over three years and I hope it will be another 50 because when I go to the so called doctors I start having seizers and I do not like getting sick and have to pay to get sick.
I like obamas plan except I do not want to be forced to see what they are calling doctors nowadays. I would be better off seeing a witch doctor.
Our biggest problem health wise is no physical education in schools no large parks near residential areas and all our food has chemicals in them and our oceans are polluted.
Drugs from the greedy pharmaceutical companies are not the answer we have gotten fat and lazy because of TV's computers vehicles and automation. Do not get me wrong if it was not for the waist to bring up prices I would love automation But automation requires that we get our exercise elsewhere instead of at work. and the pharmaceutical companies wants to replace exercise with pills and A lot of people are falling for it.
Don D. Brock
Rationing pt.2
A health board? Who will sit on it? I think you can bet it will not be people with a deeply religious or pro-life worldview. It will be a secular humanist elite (I know the term is considered trite in many circles). How many devout Christians and Jews do you see in high political, government, business and academic positions, in relation to their demographic place in society? The health board will just be a tool to deny us kunckle-dragging "Bible-thumpers," "bead counters" and "beanie wearers" our healthcare preferences. I use these slurs advisedly, because I have been around Ivy-League people enough to know that's exactly how we are thought of by most of them.
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