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Healthcare Rationing: What Price Is A Life?
Was Dick Cheney's quadruple bypass surgery worth the money?
In the United States healthcare reform is policy wonk talk for changing up the way Americans ration health. Conservatives criticize change in the healthcare status quo as “rationing”. Liberals blithely promise reform will not include “rationing”. Both are fibbing.
Rationing healthcare is what health systems do. No scheme, no government, no insurer, no individual (save perhaps the über-rich) has unlimited money to buy all the healthcare everyone wants.
In America, we ration healthcare by place of employment. If you have a steady job with a large employer, you probably have decent health insurance. If you are self-employed, maybe not.
Vice President Dick Cheney suffered four heart attacks beginning at age 37. Thanks to American socialized medicine for elected officials, Cheney has been cared for at the very best taxpayer-subsidized hospitals. His is a life worth saving.
If Cheney were a poor, young, Latina private housekeeper, most likely he would not have had health insurance when he needed it. And, it is damn certain he would not have gotten any preventive checkups in, no doubt, a “secure, undisclosed location”.
If Mr. Cheney were born in the developing world, he might well have died in infancy. Dr. Donald R. Hopkins, Vice President, The Carter Center, writes, “Children born in most advanced industrialized countries…experience infant mortality rates of 10 per 1,000 live births…and can expect to live an average of more than 70 years. Children born in developing countries…face infant mortality rates of 150 or higher (with) a life expectancy of 50 years or less.”
The cure for measles, a highly contagious disease, has been in use for over 30 years. As a result, measles has been wiped out in the developing world. In poorer countries, measles still infects 30 million people annually, mostly kids.
Would you deny the Vice President, a former heavy smoker, his quadruple bypass surgery (estimated cost: $45,000.00) to pay for inoculating 180,000 children against measles (estimated cost: 25 cents per child)? That is reality of global healthcare rationing.
900,000 poor children are annually sentenced to death because measles inoculations are unavailable (rationed?). Would you spend a quarter to save a child’s life?
Dick Cheney bypass?
However, as an objective observer, how can we evaluate people based on their personal 'value' as a human being, if indeed all human beings should (and that's a big should...) be treated equally. The answer is it can't be done. But what we DO do is evaluate people based on their economic value as human beings--equally unacceptable. No easy answers, just opinions as is mine above.
What is wonderful is that there are untold numbers of wonderful humanitarians making untold contributions to humanity every day as I write this. As a friend of mine used to say: A big mistake in a little man is little; but a little mistake in a big man is big. Cheney should have that plaque on his wall, or better still tatooed on his heart.