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Or we just avoid this whole mess and create a free market in health care.
by leifaffles 9y ago
Or we just avoid this whole mess and create a free market in health care.
- maxerickson 9y agoI'd like to see people that advocate for this do it in a straightforward way and start by advocating for the repeal of EMTALA. It doesn't make any sense to legally require stabilizing care and then do nothing to get people to participate on the pay side.
- mikeash 9y agoIt really is telling that there is essentially zero advocacy for repealing EMTALA.
- mikeash 9y agoUnfortunately that doesn’t fix the mess of sick people dying of easily treated diseases because they don’t have enough money.
- leifaffles 9y agoDo you have any examples? Which people, which diseases, and who denied them care?
- mikeash 9y agoGoogle “death due to lack of health insurance” for numerous examples. If you want some specific ones here, consider a diabetic who can’t afford insulin, or someone with cancer who can’t pay for treatment. If we’re talking about a true free market where ERs can turn people away, then it could be something simple like having a heart attack while you’re out and forgot your insurance card at home, or being mugged, beaten, and left for dead.
- dawnerd 9y agoExactly. Free market would turn it into care only for the wealthy while the poor die at home.
- mikeash 9y agoEven the wealthy should worry about such a world, since you never know when you might end up in the ER with no papers.
- leifaffles 9y agoI did. "death due to lack of health insurance" 4 results. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but I think it is important to ground this broader discussion in actual specifics. I keep hearing all these insane stories of people dying on the streets, which simply doesn't reflect anybody's lived experience. Of course that's not to say there aren't significant real problems, but the discussion is so hyperbolic and far from reality that it's almost not worth having. This problem underlies both the "universal health care" and the free market absolutists. They're both selling different versions of utopia, which don't exist.
- mikeash 9y agoYou kept the quotes on the search phrase and ignored everything else I wrote? You’re not arguing in good faith here.
- leifaffles 9y agoOh brother. I didn't ignore everything else you wrote. You presented hypotheticals and I explained how we need fewer hypotheticals and more grounding in reality.
- brainfire 9y agoAnything that can be prevented at a cost. Anything that seems like a less serious illness that wouldn't be worth missing a rent payment over. You can get emergency care and just not pay for it if you can't afford it. You can't get preventative care if you can't afford it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]