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This is basically the conservative argument that you don’t have a basic right to health care. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. I’m not saying that log

This is basically the conservative argument that you don’t have a basic right to health care. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. I’m not saying that logic is flawed, but we should at least be consistent. If healthcare is a human right, you can’t then judge my life choices that got me there.

dragontamer 5y ago
I lean conservative. Numerous hospitals have reached triage of care. We now have to talk about how to conserve scarce resources. We need to pick "winners and losers". No one likes this discussion, but it must happen. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... * https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-letter.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-l... Now that we're reaching this level of crisis, hospitals are beginning to ration off care. I know the ethicists have theorized the proper ethics to this situation over the past year, but as citizens / voting members of the public, its our job to form an opinion about these ethics think-tanks, and whether or not we should support certain viewpoints or not. Health care cannot "be a right" if we cannot afford said health care for everyone. If we cannot afford health care for everyone (literally not enough hospital beds), some mechanism needs to be used to prioritize who gets care or not. No amount of policy can squeeze blood from a stone: if we don't have enough hospital beds anymore, then we must systematically deny care in some regards. (And whatever system we choose will hopefully be fair) Money, for all of its problems, is an effective prioritization methodology... and simple to understand. You give care to those who can afford it. People always criticize the methodology but in the absence of better choices, I'm going to default to it. I think there's some hypotheticals saying that maybe the vaccinated should have priority (since the unvaccinated are the group who is causing the crisis, we should "punish" the unvaccinated in this regards). I think I can accept that as an answer as a higher priority.
- somewhereoutth 5y ago
  Meanwhile back in civilisation, healthcare is allocated by need.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Lets say the hospital is full, as is the case in Alaska Regional Hospital, and then 20 more COVID19 patients come in. 1. You can either kick out some people in beds (making room for the new patients). 2. Or, you turn away the patients (and wish them the best of course). Those are the only two choices. When you're out of beds, you're out of beds. Governors across the country have been pulling in student nurses, and increasing nurse pay to encourage retired nurses back into the hospitals. But eventually, you run out of nurses / beds / resources, and run up against this hard limit. We have an ability to magically summon new nurses, but all those abilities have been used up by now (we had a nursing shortage _before_ COVID19 happened after all) The correct answer, from an "ethics" perspective, is to be ready for the situation, and ethically prioritize the different cases. But all of them "need" the hospital bed. But the physics of the situation means that some of them are going to go home without treatment. --------- Then tomorrow, 20 more patients come in, and you repeat the process. The day after that, another 20 patients. Etc. etc. You then repeat this situation until the COVID19 surge is over.

dragontamer 5y ago

I lean conservative. Numerous hospitals have reached triage of care. We now have to talk about how to conserve scarce resources. We need to pick "winners and losers". No one likes this discussion, but it must happen. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... * https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-letter.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-l... Now that we're reaching this level of crisis, hospitals are beginning to ration off care. I know the ethicists have theorized the proper ethics to this situation over the past year, but as citizens / voting members of the public, its our job to form an opinion about these ethics think-tanks, and whether or not we should support certain viewpoints or not. Health care cannot "be a right" if we cannot afford said health care for everyone. If we cannot afford health care for everyone (literally not enough hospital beds), some mechanism needs to be used to prioritize who gets care or not. No amount of policy can squeeze blood from a stone: if we don't have enough hospital beds anymore, then we must systematically deny care in some regards. (And whatever system we choose will hopefully be fair) Money, for all of its problems, is an effective prioritization methodology... and simple to understand. You give care to those who can afford it. People always criticize the methodology but in the absence of better choices, I'm going to default to it. I think there's some hypotheticals saying that maybe the vaccinated should have priority (since the unvaccinated are the group who is causing the crisis, we should "punish" the unvaccinated in this regards). I think I can accept that as an answer as a higher priority.

somewhereoutth 5y ago
Meanwhile back in civilisation, healthcare is allocated by need.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Lets say the hospital is full, as is the case in Alaska Regional Hospital, and then 20 more COVID19 patients come in. 1. You can either kick out some people in beds (making room for the new patients). 2. Or, you turn away the patients (and wish them the best of course). Those are the only two choices. When you're out of beds, you're out of beds. Governors across the country have been pulling in student nurses, and increasing nurse pay to encourage retired nurses back into the hospitals. But eventually, you run out of nurses / beds / resources, and run up against this hard limit. We have an ability to magically summon new nurses, but all those abilities have been used up by now (we had a nursing shortage _before_ COVID19 happened after all) The correct answer, from an "ethics" perspective, is to be ready for the situation, and ethically prioritize the different cases. But all of them "need" the hospital bed. But the physics of the situation means that some of them are going to go home without treatment. --------- Then tomorrow, 20 more patients come in, and you repeat the process. The day after that, another 20 patients. Etc. etc. You then repeat this situation until the COVID19 surge is over.