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by vidarh 4782 days ago
If the government doesn't, peoples finances decide who is deserving of care and who is not, which more often than not means an insurance company decides.

Personally I'm far more comfortable with a board under democratic control setting rules based on clinical considerations for whether or not someone is suitable for care, than having someone with a profit motive to avoid paying for my care making that decision.
1 comments
sp332 4782 days ago
You're more optimistic than I am if you think that a government committee will be democratic, or that such a committee (democratic or not) would base its decisions on clinical considerations, or that people would not be outraged at rational clinical decisions.

In general, I think this kind of decision is highly personal and dependent on circumstance, and cannot possibly be regulated at the federal level.

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vidarh 4782 days ago
I am optimistic of that because I've lived all my 38 years in countries where all of those are the case for the most part, and where violations leads to lawsuits and heads rolling, resulting in health systems ranked substantially higher than the US, while costing less money per capita (UK and Norway).

In the UK this is handled by NICE: http://www.nice.org.uk/

They conduct appraisals of technology and medicine, and the NHS is required by law to provide treatments that NICE recommends.

The NHS trusts may elect to provide funding for additional treatments, though.

A number of their working groups etc. are open to healthcare professionals, and some are open to patient representatives, carers and lay people. Consultations are open to anyone. On top of that they are accountable to their sponsoring department.

Overall, this system works. You hear people complain about wait times for non-essential treatments, but everyone gets treated.

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bane 4782 days ago
> You're more optimistic than I am if you think that a government committee will be democratic, or that such a committee (democratic or not) would base its decisions on clinical considerations, or that people would not be outraged at rational clinical decisions.

As opposed to the democratic decision that's already being made in board rooms?

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sp332 4782 days ago
It doesn't have to be democratic because it's not using the public's money.
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bane 4782 days ago
oh I see, so long as people are killed by private money it's cool.
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sp332 4782 days ago
Oh, so as long as people are "killed" democratically it's cool.

Nobody's killing anybody. People die. It happens. Maybe someday I will have a heart attack. On that day, I'm not going to rob somebody at gunpoint and demand they give me $33k. Equivalently, I'm not going to have the government threaten fellow citizens with jail time and garnished wages if they don't pay their taxes to pay for my treatment. And I'd appreciate it if they'd extend me the same respect.

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bane 4782 days ago
You know what? You're right. Fuck it. People die. Let's not even bother. Let's cut out the police department, the military...even if you did have the money, why bother? You're just going to die.

Why bother eating right or exercising? Fuck, why not just off ourselves and save all the hassle.

There's absolutely no difference amongst the different kinds of things people can die from, especially ones that are easy to fix and ones that we can't do anything about.

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