@shooter: Yoda? Wow, that’s so funny and no one else has EVER said that before. Any more ethnic slurs about my name? How about calling me a rice eater? Had some for lunch even. Are my eyes too slanted for you? Have you checked the race of this websites director lately?

I also think you are not accurately representing the point I was applauding dbc lawyer for making. I was thanking him for recognizing the the corollary of “Healthcare is a Right” is that physicians, particularly young ones like myself, are turned into slave labor, because as the government then becomes required to make sure everyone gets their right, they try to cut costs by arbitrarily setting prices at whatever they dictate, which usually isn’t even enough to cover our costs. This problem with designating something as a right was nicely illustrated back in the day when health insurance companies would provide coverage for medical expenses but not dental. At first the dentists were terrified that they would go broke, but the reverse happened, as all Reaganites should have guessed. Under government regulations and lack of free market, physicians got poorer, quality got worse, and I’d say the quality of physician got worse too. (You may say but look at all the advances in technology and drugs…that is not something that is regulated the same way, new drugs and tech often get reimburshed quite well) Dentists on the other hand operated in the free market, figured out what people wanted (teeth whitening etc.) and have advanced their trade amazingly. Several articles, including in the WSJ have done nice comparisons about Dentist and Physician brothers/in-laws etc.

It was that aspect (Right to Healthcare vs. Right of Physician) that I was addressing to dbclawyer and not the totality of the situation. I thought I was making that clear when I wrote “Thankfully, I don’t know any physicians who would stop treated a deathly ill person just because they couldn’t pay. That’s more a State, Hospital, Society issue.” but apparently I wasn’t.

What I meant by SHS issue, is that there is only a limited amount of any good, including healthcare, and someone is going to have to figure out who gets what and I don’t want or think the physician should be deciding that. It should be the State or Society.

Because there is only a limited quantity of healthcare, there is going to have to be some limiting or quota system to ration out the supply there is. That may be quotas, ration coupons or free-market dollars…or something else.

It is all fine and good to say “non-emergent stuff should be paid for by the patient” but what if that non-emergent stuff pays the best (usually does) and there aren’t enough physicians (and hospital beds etc) to take care of the emergent stuff? Going to force physicians to do the work anyway? That actually does happen now, in case you weren’t aware. It also happens with drugs: companies make more lifestyle drugs because they are more profitable than vaccines. I don’t blame the companies…it is Society that decides they are willing to pay for their erections, but not for the MMR….oh, look, we got mumps and measles back again in this country. It is a systemic problem in this country: teachers make crap, but actors with no skills make millions. It is we in society who are to blame.

Moto Oda on May 4, 2006 at 5:59 PM

Um, dman, 1) no one was using race as a basis of any argument. That was an isolated paragraph totally segregated from any argument. It was also a joke as it’s not my real name, nor am I even Japanese (or asian). and 2) it was shooter who brought up immigration as a non sequitar, which I neither I nor dbclawyer at all was refering too. Nice straw man attempt, or did you just not bother to read?

The thesis of the argument was simply that healthcare is a limited supply good and ought not to be a right.

Moto Oda on May 4, 2006 at 9:57 PM