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Old 5th November 2019, 01:37 AM   #142
Giordano
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 17,646
Just want to point out that health care is always "rationed" to some extent because society can't afford to, or does not wish to, deliver all procedures to all patients. X-amount of money is available to pay for Y numbers of procedures. Which procedures are to be paid for must be determined by some means.

In most countries with government run health care these decisions are made by panels including doctors and ethicists. This is not inherently evil: e.g. most people agree with limiting purely cosmetic surgeries, or one million dollar treatments in deep end stage disease patients unlikely to benefit at all or for more than a few days.

In the USA these decisions are based on how rich the patient or, if less wealthy, by their insurance company. A poor person with bad insurance may never get a crucial treatment whereas a wealthy person in less need will. And to emphasize, if less than wealthy it is one's private, profit-driven insurance company, not one's doctor, who determines whether you have an expensive treatment or not.

Neither are ideal and each has flaws. But ethically and in terms of fairness I feel the former is better than the latter. And in fact the wealthy usually find a way no matter what.
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