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Health care - Commodity or social service?

There has been an interesting discussion, even a little heated at one point, over at InsureBlog which started out discussing a recent poll conducted by ABC News, USA Today and the Kaiser Family Foundation purported to show that in general people in the US were very satisfied with their health care.

The discussion soon digressed into comparing the purchase of health care/insurance to the purchase of groceries, auto insurance, loans and a few other analogies. I didn't think the analogies were appropriate (actually I called them stupid, which is what created some animosity), but it seemed everyone else thought they were good analogies.

I believe, like every other industrialized country in the world believes, health care is not a

commodity distributed according to the ability to pay


rather it is a

social service distributed according to medical need.


Unlike the ability to get a loan or buy gasoline or a car, we don't have nearly as much control over our health. Even when you lead a totally healthy life style, you can still get sick. Plus not having the ability to seek medical attention when it is needed, can create far more serious consequences for society as a whole, than not having the ability to purchase a car, or getting a home loan.

Having originally questioned the demographics of those polled, since the results of the poll are very believable if you ask only healthy people, I thought I would try and conduct my own informal poll to see how everyone who reads my blog feels about the state of health care in the US.

Should health care be treated as a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, or a social service distributed according to medical need?

Click Here To Vote and View Results!

NOTE FROM AUTHOR: I apologize in advance for any pop-ups you may experience when trying to vote. It is the inevitable consequence of using a free service that would otherwise have a fee attached.
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Comments

Becky said…
It needs to be distributed according to our medical needs. I thought I had great auto insurance until I had to use it.

It's the same with medical. Well actually, I always had great medical insurance until HMO's came along. But the majority of people think they have great benefits and will continue to do so until they need to use it.

My neighbor is 25 years old, bought his own insurance while in college, (how responsible) grew some tumors, he had them removed, and now his insurance carrier (who authorized the procedure) is stating it was a pre-existing condition and isn't going to pay the $75,000.

It's just a sad realization. But if he were an axe murderer in prison, we would pick up the tab.
2:24 AM
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