Why Is Health Care Special

[chris_gerrib]

So, bdunbar provided a link to this fellow, who asks why is health care special? In other words, why don't we treat health care like, say ordering a meal in a restaurant.

Well, part of the answer is called rescission. This is where you pay your premiums, get sick, and then get dropped for an undiagnosed or unknown pre-existing condition. It's the equivalent of walking into a restaurant, ordering and paying for a meal, getting the soup, but then not getting the main course. And not getting a refund! Sorry you're still sick hungry - not our fault.

The more fundamental answer is that a lot of our health is out of our control. There is no way to prevent gallstones. I had melanoma a few years ago. Maybe if I hadn't spent my youth standing on the bridge of a frigate in Florida - or maybe not. My father and his brother both had prostate cancer in their mid-50s, vastly increasing my risk. Other than picking different parents, what am I supposed to do about that?

Attempting to financially encourage people to be healthy is a great idea. Unfortunately, there are real limits to how much control we have over our health. Penalizing people for matters over which they have no control is fundamentally un-American. Except that's exactly what our current health care system does.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Also, our current health care system makes money off of NOT providing health care. That's like having police that rob banks or firemen that set fires. It's crazy!

Jerry Critter
critterscrap.blogspot.com