http://www.nytimes.com/200
I am as irritated as anyone by the possibility of the government funneling money into an inefficient, ineffective health care system that, instead of giving more people access to good and affordable care, reduces the standard of care for those who already receive it. However, I just cannot fathom this man's arguments against national healthcare legislation. Health care could be rationed, his wife could be on a waiting list...I guess that is possible. But by that logic, health care is already rationed: it is allotted to those who can afford it out of pocket, or who are fortunate enough to have employers who cover it, or who qualify for government programs. He's not upset about rationing health care, he's upset that the rationing might skew away from him. An understandable concern, but let's be honest about what the real concern is.
In response to the possibility of losing his own job, and thus the insurance that covers his wife's treatments, Collier mentions the need for a safety net for those who can't get insurance. But there's a caveat: "...I don’t want that safety net to catch too many people."
This pretty much sums up my problems with opposition to universally accessible health care. How many people are "too many?" What is the limit on how many people should be allowed a chance at being healthy? How do we decide who gets that chance? And why, when it's up to us to decide, does it always seem to be us who gets the chance (whichever "us" is speaking), and someone else who doesn't?
When we start trying to orchestrate the health care system to make sure we're always the ones under that umbrella while others are out in the rain, it seems to me that we're making a potentially fatal mistake - literally. I just wish people would realize that it's entirely possible that someday it could be their umbrella that gets yanked away.
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