10-16-2009, 02:01 PM
Quote:Currently, everyone gets the treatment they need. Have you heard horrible tales of people being turned away from hospitals? I think it is quite the opposite. Hospitals in the US are usually required by law to treat anyone who comes to the door.They are required to suture you up if you're bleeding to death. They aren't required to give you any long term treatment, diagnostics (beyond what is necessary to identify what's immediately killing you), or treatment for chronic conditions. Once your organs aren't rotting, your heart is pumping, and you're not going to fall over dead, they can send you on your merry way until the next emergency.
This is a staggeringly inefficient way to provide health care. If you proposed it to either a doctor *or* an economist in the abstract, it would cause them to spit their morning coffee. It drives up costs, it provides very little benefit relative to effort, and it only barely covers the ethical and humanitarian issues with last-minute emergency care.
So, if what concerns you so deeply are the costs to your dear Republic, then you need to do one of two things: stop treating emergencies at hospitals for free (highly unethical, but very cheap), or come up with a system that accomplishes the same goals for everyone at less cost. Conveniently, a wide range of such systems exist, and are in widespread use around the first world. Their costs and benefits are public knowledge.
Or, alternately, you can keep repeating the hopeful mantra "private costs less", and hope the data decide to invert themselves to suit your preferences.
-Jester