Euthanasia or profit-based health care--are those my only two choices? Really? I keep trying to wrap my brain around the twisted logic of the "deathers", but I can't seem to do it. The math logic seems to go like this---health care minus profit motive equals euthanasia. This seems like reverse logic to me. Insurance companies make more money by NOT treating illnesses. It is in their best financial interests for those customers who require expensive treatments to die. Apparently, we are being asked to trust insurance companies based only on the fact that they want to keep us alive because only live people can pay premiums. This logic does not seem to take the pre-existing condition called "life" into account--or more importantly, the quality of life.
Having worked in my youth as a nurse's aide, my life experience does not support the notion that those on Medicare, a government-run health care system, are euthanized. Perhaps things have changed quite a bit since then, but I can remember, for example, Medicare providing hip replacements for ninety-five year old people who didn't even have enough strength left to walk anymore, some of whom didn't even have the mental capacity to ask for or authorize the surgery themselves. I sometimes suspected that had they been able to decide, they wouldn't have chosen to either subject themselves to the extra pain or society to the extra expense. However, many times their doctors were authorized to make medical decisions for which they would receive compensation. Sadly, the more treatment, the more compensation. It was painful to watch someone in their final days have to go through that degree of physical agony, only to die weeks later. But their deaths certainly weren't the result of the government's lack of compassion or desire to cut costs. Greed and corruption within the medical profession is a separate issue.
Private insurance companies go to the other extreme. While they want to keep us alive to pay premiums, they don't want to pay for anything that will improve our quality of life. They often cancel policies of those who require more expense than the actuarial tables indicate will make it cost effective for them to be "customers" or their claims are denied for months and years, in the hope that they will die before being able to receive costly treatment. Heart-wrenching stories of young people with their whole lives before them dying because they were denied a transplant, or a middle-aged person denied life-saving medication because their policies were cancelled abound.
Forgive the analogy, but it's like a dysfunctional family. The health care industry is mom, the insurance industry is dad, and we're the kids. They have a horrible marriage. All they ever do is fight. I think they should just get a divorce. I confess. I've grown cynical, hard even. So hard that I want no part in taking sides or supporting either parent figure in this horrible scenario. They are fighting over my remains and I'm not even dead yet. I've grown so hard that they can forget about me donating any organs. Why should I give them anything for free so that they can turn around and make a half million dollar profit on it? They are like welfare parents, keeping us alive so they can keep collecting their government checks, trying to rent us out to strangers for crack. I won't even so much as donate blood anymore. When I see them providing an example and donating their time, talent and resources, I'll do the same, and not until. Now, on the other hand, if anyone wants to BUY a kidney, let me know. I could use the money, the economy being what it is right now. I need a job, but not so badly that I'd work for the mom and dad. Oh, wait, that's right---it's illegal for me to profit from my own organs, but legal for others to do so. Damn you, mom and dad! Damn you and your lobbyists, too!
Sorry. I lapsed into childish anger there for a moment, and everyone knows one can't think clearly when they are angry. So, back to being an adult. As an adult, I propose that we transform the insurance industry into watchdogs for the medical profession--let them do what they do best, calculate cost/benefit ratios, but to make sure that nobody is being given treatment they don't really want or need just for profit. Let's take it further and let them be watchdogs for malpractice attorneys as well, who are largely responsible for creating the conditions under which insurance companies could move in and take our health care system hostage. Let's let doctors be human, yet insist they be competent, make compensation for their mistakes reasonable and fair, and also not for profit. Jeez, this all seems so obvious that even a kid could figure it out. Didn't somebody famous once say that " a child shall lead them"?