This bit is very important:
The discussion focusing on the rationing should also make another point that no one wants or seems to be pondering, where will the benefits creep? You'll ration the things that lots of people require like heart surgery and cancer treatments, but what about those things that people don't require? Plastic surgery because your shrink says you need it for your mental health, or a sex change operation. Massachusetts requires that insurance pay for fertility treatments, which you well understand is extremely expensive. Will this make its way on to the required coverage? What about ED drugs? Or the pill for that matter. Or abortions.
Who makes the decision on what is required to cover and what isn't? And, what will those writing the rules now say when an opposition party is in power and changes the rules that they so covet? Should we even mention that the rules can be changed by amendments to laws having nothing to do with healthcare and slip by because no one actually reads these giant tomes of bills?
Do we really want a politician deciding what medical treatments we need?
Over at the Munchkin Wrangler he has a similar discussion on the "right" to health care.
The interesting thing is that it seems Americans have discovered that talk of health care as a “right” doesn’t mean expanding their own freedom. It means, at best, expanding the options of others at the expense of the middle class and, naturally, “the rich.”That isn't an opinion so much as a fact. It will be those that pay taxes subsidizing those that don't. And getting less themselves in the long run.
Polling by the centrist think tank Third Way finds that the pivotal question for Americans is, “What’s in it for me?” And it seems President Obama hasn’t answered that to their satisfaction. Sixty percent of Americans think Obama’s health care plan will help someone other than them.
The discussion focusing on the rationing should also make another point that no one wants or seems to be pondering, where will the benefits creep? You'll ration the things that lots of people require like heart surgery and cancer treatments, but what about those things that people don't require? Plastic surgery because your shrink says you need it for your mental health, or a sex change operation. Massachusetts requires that insurance pay for fertility treatments, which you well understand is extremely expensive. Will this make its way on to the required coverage? What about ED drugs? Or the pill for that matter. Or abortions.
Who makes the decision on what is required to cover and what isn't? And, what will those writing the rules now say when an opposition party is in power and changes the rules that they so covet? Should we even mention that the rules can be changed by amendments to laws having nothing to do with healthcare and slip by because no one actually reads these giant tomes of bills?
Do we really want a politician deciding what medical treatments we need?
Over at the Munchkin Wrangler he has a similar discussion on the "right" to health care.
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