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This is not the time to debate the healthcare issues This was a great story about a caring family and their son Lucas getting treatment and the tech family hel

• gfodor 15y ago
  Why is this "not the time to debate the healthcare issues?" I could see that being a fair point if someone had died, out of respect. But in this case I seriously do not see why it's just assumed that talking about healthcare in the U.S. is not fair game for this thread?
  • mbreese 15y ago
    Because the story wasn't about the US health-care system. It was about a family that decided to relocate to be closer to their son's doctors at Duke. They also decided to stop working during their son's treatment to better take care of him. To do this, they needed financial help and the Reddit community stepped up to help cover the bills. These were all tough (and valid) choices for the family, but doesn't have much to do with the state of the US heath-care system. Their choices were all outside the heath-care system, it was about caring for their family during a hard time. Their son was denied treatment, in fact, insurance wasn't even mentioned in the original story. By starting to talk about the need for universal health care, the entire conversation changes away from what was a simple story about the power of social media to help people. Instead the thread devolves to a pro-universal health-care versus libertarianism debate. Unfortunately, this is the way HN has started running on the weekends. All we end up with are the same arguments: libertarianism is awesome, Apple sucks, Android sucks, Google sucks, religion sucks, HN has degraded :), etc... it is a little tiring. So while, it may be a good time to discuss the state of heath-care in the US, this story isn't the place. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.
    • illumin8 15y ago
      I disagree. The family would not have had to stop working during their son's treatment in any country with universal health care. The US family medical leave act is ridiculous in that it only allows up to 12 weeks in a calendar year of leave before the employer is entitled to terminate you. In any other first world country with universal health care, the right to take an extended leave of absence to care for a sick or dying child is protected by law. Other countries have looked at the economic consequences of forcing a productive citizen to quit their job to care for a dying relative and have determined that it is both less costly than paying for professional in home nursing and less costly from a societal standpoint in that the family does not need to collect welfare assistance because they lost their job. How is that not related to the story?
    • masklinn 15y ago
      > It was about a family that decided to relocate to be closer to their son's doctors at Duke. It was not exactly a decision, leaving a 3 years old child for 6 months in a medical environment tends to be a rather hurtful option for everybody. > They also decided to stop working during their son's treatment to better take care of him. Outside the US, there are UHC countries with (paid) caretaker leave, or allowing parents to use (paid) sick leaves to take care of young children if needs arises. In Sweden, they could have taken up to 364 days at 80% salary (and a further 550 days at 75% salary). And even without that, this would generally be protected circumstances: the employer would not be allowed to fire the employee for taking unpaid leave to take care of his/her child, not without taking significant (monetary) risks. > By starting to talk about the need for universal health care, the entire conversation changes away from what was a simple story about the power of social media to help people. I'd expect that people in here try to get to the root of the problem instead of praising band-aids. Praising band-aids is good, but insufficient: band-aids are a short-term solution to potentially systemic problems.