Why We Must Ration Health Care
By PETER SINGER
Published: July 15, 2009
You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.
In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published at the end of last year with the headline “Obama Will Ration Your Health Care,” Sally Pipes, C.E.O. of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, described how in Britain the national health service does not pay for drugs that are regarded as not offering good value for money, and added, “Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives.” And the Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, told CNSNews in April, “There is no rationing of health care at all” in the proposed reform.
Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.” The man’s response implies that if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute. The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?
Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another.
Peter Singer is now one of President Barack Obama's primary advisors on healthcare.
Peter Singer says infants aren't normal human beings with rights to life and liberty: "Characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness...make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings."Here is more information on Obama Care, rationing, and Peter Singer
Peter Singer: Obama wins: The president-elect must act to restore America's global image and reverse the corrosive legacy of the Bush years.
2 comments:
My wife has the same thyroid cancer which killed Chief justice Rehnquist, but is thankfully more fortunate.
As an early part of the treatment her entire thryoid was removed. Your parathyroids are on the thyroid and they typically try to replant them.
The did not regain life or function and do not in about 70-80% of cases.
That means she has no calcium metabolism and all the calcium in her body must be taken orally every day, or you die.
In terms of what she needs - 25 600 mg tablets a day, on top of all the other required drugs.
Calcium like milk blocks absorption of other drugs.
The way around this is with an expensive Rx which allows Calcium to be easily absorbed allowing her to take 2 calciums a day.
Neither Britain or Canada pays for this treatment.
That is just ONE extremely TRIVIAL example of what rationed health care means.
How many MILLIONS of cases just like this are there with different conditions?
Health care is Obama's election WRIT LARGE
Thanks for your concrete example, Epa.
Concrete truth is the answer to mysticism.
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