Quote: (09-27-2018 11:36 PM)Graft Wrote:
Not having any sort of national healthcare. Is everyone really opposed to having a little extra tax for a guarantee that you won’t die from illness/injury?
I have lived in countries with national healthcare and countries without. I can see the positives and negatives to both scenarios. That being said, my recent reading of and posts in the Huffington Post Fat Acceptance thread got me thinking about this.
In places like the UK and Canada, you have a huge number of people who are continuously (and I mean throughout their entire lives) sponging off of the healthcare system. And their healthcare problems, where they exist, are mostly self-caused and self-perpetuating.
I recently read an article that claimed that upwards of thirty percent of people in Saskatchewan have a registered disability. My recent hospital experience(s) in the Prairies lead me to believe that a good number of obese people are registered disabled. This provides benefits well beyond a nice parking spot (as long as the government is going to get involved, shouldn't we be having fat people park as far away from the door as possibe?). So, they get "free" healthcare, they are often prioritized for surgeries (over, say, geriatric patients), and they get ancillary benefits from the system.
If I am to support a publicly-funded system, two conditions are absolute requirements. The first is that a two-tiered system must be legally allowable. I shouldn't have to jump on a plane to New York if I want proper and expedient medical care. The second is that there must be patient accountability (skin in the game) for those with self-caused medical issues. For example, if you are morbidly obese and have been diagnosed as diabetic, I believe you should be put on a sort of "sliding scale" for medical and pharmaceutical coverage. As long as you stay obese, the scale continues to slide. In year one, 100% is covered. In year two, 80%. Etc. Etc. By year five, you are on your own. Half a decade is a reasonable amount of time for an individual to make significant changes to their diet and lifestyle, especially with that kind of incentive. Those that don't can avail themselves of charity or shuffle off (which they seem to want to anyway).
My .02.
Currently out of office.