From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Sun Jul 24 2005 - 19:02:19 BST
On 24 Jul 2005 at 11:06, Arlo J. Bensinger wrote:
On "health care":
[Platt]
As I've argued before, "life saving" is a term with different
meanings to different people. You and I may agree as to what
constitutes "saving" as opposed to "enhancing," but others will
disagree.
[Arlo]
Likely. My aim was not to argue specifics, but present one way of
looking at the spectrum of health care that could then be analyzed
via the MOQ. "Life saving", of course, Pirsig addresses in describing
the value of the individual.
msh 7-24-05:
I guess I don't see how the term "life-saving services" is in anyway
vague. If a critically injured person isn't rushed to the hospital,
he will die. If a diabetic is deprived of insulin, he will die. If
a woman suffering from kidney failure is denied dialysis, she will
die. If someone suffering from severe hypertension is denied blood
pressure medicine, he will die. Seems pretty straight-forward to me:
a doctor, or community-level panel of doctors should be the arbiters.
Hospitals already provide such panels. Of course, there's the
problem of wealth and power corrupting the panel's decisions, but
that's true even of the Supreme Court, which, after all, is packed
with political appointees. In a moral society, the battle against
corruption will be waged separately by, among other things, allowing
a fully-informed (MOQ-inspired) public to oversee institutional
decision-making.
Seems to me.
[Platt continues]
Some will opt by democratic vote to tax themselves for more health
services than others. If an entire nation votes for universal health
services, so be it.
msh 7-24-05:
Unfortunately, this ignores the corrupting influence of corporate
wealth over our putative democracy and its sources of information.
Such influence has been well-documented in this thread and elsewhere
on the list. In 1993, when the Clinton administration took a few
faltering steps toward developing a more equitable system of health
care, their efforts were blown out of the water by millions of
dollars of propaganda coming primarily from the health insurance
industry. So, instead of rational debate of the issue, voters saw
thousands of commercials asserting that a national health plan was
some kind of, gasp, socialism. Remember those "Harry and Louise"
commercials?
So, again, in a moral society composed of fully-informed individuals,
it's hard to imagine that US voters would not have gone in the
direction of every other industrialized nation on earth.
Here's a report (with lots of documentation, references, links) which
explores in detail the "defeat" of nationalized health care, after
Clinton was elected:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coalition_for_Health_Insura
nce_Choices
[Platt continues]
From my knowledge of how other countries have fared under government
health programs, I would fight and vote against it.
msh 7-24-05:
Hard to see how real knowledge of government health programs in all
the other industrialized nations would lead to one's voting against
one, here. The very fact that the vast majority of people in these
nations continue to support nationalized health care should be
evidence enough of its popularity. Why is it different in the US?
See above.
Best to all,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
-- InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983 Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com "Among aristocratic nations, money reaches only to a few points on the vast circle of man's desires; in democracies, it seems to lead all." -- Alexis de Tocqueville MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archives: Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jul 25 2005 - 08:09:36 BST