Should medicine be an entitlement?

[Kahreek]

Medical care should be a right, just as justice and education.

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[Kahreek]

itt people confusing government and state.

 

[Kahreek]

You want free healthcare, sure the state pays, who is the state, you are the state.

 

[jdh71]

Plus they do have a program where you can apply to get care locally. Not sure how hard it is to get into that program, but it is something they have. The real issue is that they are trying to provide care for more people (due to more people being considered to have service connected issues with the recognition of even stuff such as diabetes as service related if you were in certain places during vietnam and other similar scenarios) with a limited budget. Then you have some people deciding that the way to make sure stuff happens is to have arbitrary goals to meet (like a wait time of X) and people working on trying to at least make it seem like they are meeting those goals. It isn't an issue unique to a government run system. If the government just acted as insurer, but told providers they had to meet a wait time goal of X some would comply if it was feasible, but others would just pretend to by shifting around the numbers. Sort of like when you see a hospital claiming not to have had any ventilator associated pneumonia for 2 yrs (which one of the hospitals I work at actually claims).

VAP is a figment of the imagination.

 

[Pacna]

Medical care should be a right, just as justice and education.

You can't have a right to someone else's labor. Rights are owed you regardless of the cost. I.e. you have a right to be free of mugging, even if the cost to others (presumably the muggers) is high.

That means that if people have the right to healthcare, then they have a right to healthcare workers' labor without pay. That is a nice way to describe slavery.

You want free healthcare, sure the state pays, who is the state, you are the state.

First, no, you're not the state. That is laughable. Send your neighbor a bill to 'collect taxes.' If they're a good sport, they'll just laugh at you.

Second, even if you were the state, then it's not free because you (the state, in your own words) are paying for it. So you're basically saying that you should pay for healthcare, which I think is pretty obvious.

 

[Beacopp665]

My family that spent an appreciable amount of time waiting for appts that they then spent an appreciable amount of time driving to sure think that there a lot of issues

This centrally planned mess isn't efficient in any way, the best solution is to have the gov act as insurer for vets and actually pay out at rates high enough those vets can find their own doctors in their own towns on their own terms.

So what your saying is they still got the medical care they needed and deserved, it just took a while to get there and they had to wait once they got there. Sorry to break it to you this is not exclusive to the VA.

It's definitely not effecient so no argument from me there, but just recognize that while it's slow a lot of vets still get great care that otherwise wouldn't exist

 

[deleted480308]

So what your saying is they still got the medical care they needed and deserved, it just took a while to get there and they had to wait once they got there. Sorry to break it to you this is not exclusive to the VA.

It's definitely not effecient so no argument from me there, but just recognize that while it's slow a lot of vets still get great care that otherwise wouldn't exist

It would exist, the va is not the only possible way to honor commitments to vets

 

[Kahreek]

You can't have a right to someone else's labor. Rights are owed you regardless of the cost. I.e. you have a right to be free of mugging, even if the cost to others (presumably the muggers) is high.

That means that if people have the right to healthcare, then they have a right to healthcare workers' labor without pay. That is a nice way to describe slavery.



First, no, you're not the state. That is laughable. Send your neighbor a bill to 'collect taxes.' If they're a good sport, they'll just laugh at you.

Second, even if you were the state, then it's not free because you (the state, in your own words) are paying for it. So you're basically saying that you should pay for healthcare, which I think is pretty obvious.

goverment isnt the state, the state is the people who make the country, so you are part of the state.
By your logic police shouldnt exist because you are mugging them to give you protection.

 

[Mad Jack]

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/05/20/va-whistleblower-says-hes-been-demoted-bullied/

 

[Mad Jack]

With your attitude, you won't be a good doctor

Surprised it took us 8 pages for a Burnett's to happen.

 

[Pacna]

goverment isnt the state, the state is the people who make the country, so you are part of the state.
By your logic police shouldnt exist because you are mugging them to give you protection.

Oh, you couldn't have it more backwards. I am not part of the state. You're free to believe those words mean whatever you like, but don't kill the strawman!

Your rights are being violated if you are mugged. Your rights are being violated if you are extorted. If the Mafia comes to your house and asks for 'protection money,' they are violating your rights through an implied threat of violence should you fail to comply. In this scenario, the police would be the threat, and the IRS would be the knock on your door. As the police are paid through this model, you are being 'mugged' (extorted) to fund the police (and every other government function).

Now, if someone locks you in their basement and fails to feed you, then they are liable for your death. That is to say that while they absolutely have a moral requirement to let you go, failing that, they have a requirement to at least keep you alive. In the same way, so long as the police derive their funding through taxes (and maintain their monopoly on the initiation of the use of force), they are obligated to protect the people they got it from. Similarly, people should feel no guilt at calling the police for help, after all, they paid for it voluntarily or not.

That's not to say it's necessarily an immoral system; you'd have to make the case that initiation of force and the threat of that is immoral first.

 

[Stagg737]

So what your saying is they still got the medical care they needed and deserved, it just took a while to get there and they had to wait once they got there. Sorry to break it to you this is not exclusive to the VA.

It's definitely not effecient so no argument from me there, but just recognize that while it's slow a lot of vets still get great care that otherwise wouldn't exist

Most people get the care they need, just not always in a decent amount of time. jdh also stated that there is a huge backlog of disability claims and psych treatment. When you have vets on disability waiting 6 months or even a year (this happened to a hs friend) just to be seen, that is a problem that is currently exclusive to the VA.

That being said the current system has major problems as well. At least in the VA those patients are seen (even if it is too slow), where people outside the VA may just be straight up denied and not receive treatment at all, which isn't exactly a working alternative. The problem is that people are using the VA as an example of a gov. run system that is (to an extent) inadequately run for many patients. If the gov is having issues running a system involving 5-10 million individuals (maybe it's higher, idk), how well do you think this system is going to work when trying to support 350 million individuals, many of whom are likely in much worse health than many vets and don't pay taxes (ie, will be getting free treatment). The sheer volume of a program like that does not exist anywhere in the world, and imo is just not feasible on a national scale here.

 

[jdh71]

I'm actually pretty conservative and I almost choked on my coffee.

 

[Armadillos]

As a medstudent I always enjoyed working at the VA because there seemed to atleast be some attempt to provide services neccesary for good outcomes outside the hospital.

At the university hospital it seems like we are perfectly happy to rack up a 500k+ dollar stay for someone (and push the cost onto society as a whole) but then we discharge them to living under a bridge w/ no means to get meds or come to follow up.

 

[PL198]

pretty cool discussion about the VA. keep it up

 

[gjitec]

This sums up a lot:

[youtube]LO2eh6f5Go0[/youtube]