Skip to main content

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.

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.

Popular posts from this blog

My concerns reaffirmed today

When I was first diagnosed with MCL, I pretty much read just about everything I could get my hands on, I attended various conferences, and I talked to anyone who would listen. One of the most important lessons I learned, and which I've mentioned numerous times before was No one cares more about you than you. But in addition to that, I learned to fear the drug Doxorubicin , AKA Adriamycin, Doxil, Hydroxydoxorubicin, or more affectionately the Red Devil. Besides being a deadly chemical, as is the case with most chemotherapy drugs, it is one of the few chemotherapy drugs known to cause permanent heart damage. I even heard Dr. Sandra Horning , a noted Stanford lymphoma specialist, state at the first lymphoma conference I attended in LA, there was no evidence Doxorubicin provided any added benefit to chemotherapy protocols. This was music to my ears, since Doxorubicin is very common in most lymphoma treatment protocols. And even though Dr. Horning has since changed her tune [which my sk...

Bowling: A metaphor on life [sorta]

Over the past 15+ years the game of bowling has changed dramatically. Not only has the equipment changed, making it easier for bowlers of all ages and physical conditions to participate, and score well, but there have even been major advances to how the lanes are prepared for the start of bowling. No longer is it just heavy oil, light oil, long oil, short oil, or no oil, with the latest equipment, the amount of oil can be varied from front to back and side to side, producing a myriad of patterns designed to make the game more interesting, more challenging and as you might surmise, more frustrating. No longer does the "one ball fits all" approach work any more either. In order to navigate all the differing possible lane conditions, you need to have a varied selection of bowling balls. Most pros will tell you the average bowler needs 3 balls, plus a ball for spares, but to be an above average bowler you'll need at least 6 balls, with many possessing more than that. But just...

Fatigue! Part II - Maybe it is real?

Or it's actually Motivational Deficiency Disorder, MoDeD (pronounced Mo-Dee-Dee) for short. In a report this week by Roy Moynihan who reports for the British Medical Journal Austrailian scientists may have come across the reason for extreme laziness . The condition is claimed to affect up to one in five Australians and is characterised by overwhelming and debilitating apathy. Neuroscientists at the University of Newcastle in Australia say that in severe cases motivational deficiency disorder can be fatal, because the condition reduces the motivation to breathe. Neurologist Leth Argos is part of the team that has identified the disorder, which can be diagnosed using a combination of positron emission tomography and low scores on a motivation rating scale, previously validated in elite athletes. "This disorder is poorly understood," Professor Argos told the BMJ. "It is underdiagnosed and undertreated." Who knew? Maybe I have MoDeD, from my attempts to become a...