I've always argued in jest that we should be forced to pay the health care cost of our neighbor--its kind of like car insurance. You want to be insured if someone hits you.... you have an incentive to protect yourself and make sure others are forced to do so as well.
If you have to pay someone else's health care bill you have an invcentive to make sure everyone has quality affordable health care.
Right now the debate in this country is drowned out by the "me me me" crowd that could care less about those who happen to be less fortunate...
What’s Wrong with Our Health Care Debate
Uwe Reinhardt has a post on Economix that zeroes in on Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s criticism of the new mammogram guidelines. Here’s the quote from Hutchinson.
“So this task force says all of a sudden we’re going to change the guidelines that we have had for all these years. And now the public option may not pay for those, and that means the insurance companies are going to follow. The key is that these are covered by insurance so women will not have to decide if they’re going to spend $250 to get a mammogram because they and their doctors believe it is right to do so.”
Basically, the critics of the mammogram guidelines* are bemoaning the fact that certain women may not be able to get mammograms paid for by insurance — without mentioning the fact that many women don’t have insurance to begin with.
Or, to paraphrase Reinhardt: If certain medical procedures are so important to people’s health — shouldn’t everyone get them regardless of income or insurability?
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