Saturday, January 1, 2011

McIlheran's Unhealthy Approach To Health Care

Once again, McIlheran kvetches about health care reform, this time spurned on by the thought of allowing patients make informed choices as opposed to having Big Insurance make those choices for them.

First he mews about the supposed death panels that only he and Sarah Palin still believe in. Never mind that the private insurance companies provide enough death panels in their own right. Also don't mind that while governmental death panels do exist, they are only found in Republican-controlled states.

At the end of his post, we find what is his real driving factor:
The problem lies in the guarantee -- in thinking in terms of rights and of universality and equity. This doesn’t mean we must embrace some every-geezer-for-himself savagery; it suggests that some more rational approach that centers on the autonomy of the patient -- such as, for instance, the concepts behind Rep. Paul Ryan’s “roadmap” -- be central.

None of this precludes social generosity outside the realm of politics -- indeed, it calls for exactly the kind of charitable spirit implicit in every hospital name that includes the word “memorial.” Not that the government doesn’t have a role, but when we talk about health care chiefly in terms of rights asserted and claims made on strangers via the political process -- as Obamacare does -- then inevitably those strangers will balk at the cost, and they will do so through the mechanisms of the administrative state.
Keep in mind that Ryan's "road map" consists of basically taking Grandma out to the middle of nowhere and pushing her out the door, allowing her the "autonomy" of fending for herself: Life preserving medicine or life preserving food?

His solutions, let the hospitals give free treatment. They'll only turn around and stick it to the rest of us at a higher rate than a centralized system would cost, but it would allow the CEO's, board members and stake holders to profit nicely on our daily struggles for survival.

Gosh, what a humanitarian old Paddy is.

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