Drug me up, Scotty!
Engineering classes give insight to policy; the ‘fairness’ hypocrisy in health care
I came across an interesting article in the Washington Post recently that got me thinking about health care. The ironic thing about it is that the subject of the article was a comparison between our own and Britain’s heath care policies, and the UK’s NICE institution, a subject I am familiar with from an engineering class I took last semester. Here’s an article I wrote discussing the UK’s current health care policies, how they differ from those in the US, and how the concept of unfairness in the US’s system translates into a type of discrimination in universal health care. Here’s an excerpt:
The most commonly heard complaint by critics of our current system is that health coverage is often unavailable to the less wealthy and economically disadvantaged people. Without appropriate funds, the poor are unable to afford proper health services because their insurance plan does not provide enough coverage for certain procedures. Critics often hail this as unfair, as everybody should have equal opportunity to receive health care. But, now there is the British counterpart, where availability is determined by the age of the patient, the possible effectiveness of the procedure, and the longevity of the patient, post-operation. Which is more ‘fair,’ the poor man whose insurance corporation does not cover the operation, or the aging man who cannot receive effective cancer treatment because he is going to die shortly of old age, anyway? Difficult to say.
Essentially both ‘unfair’ decisions are made by an institution, whether a private insurance company or a government-funded NICE. To see if one fairness outweighs the other, let’s say that, curtly put, each person has made a mistake. The old man looking for cancer treatment? He aged, and became, essentially, worthless. The poor man? He was either born into poverty and failed to rise out, or has been unable to keep himself afloat, even on our country’s capitalist economy. It seems obvious that while of course, there are always inevitable difficulties and complexities, the man in poverty played more of a role in landing himself in the current position than the elderly patient. Of course, it is essential that Americans remain empathetic to the plight of those less well-off and benevolent and determined to bring those up from lower economic status. It is not, however, responsible to bring entitlement to some while discounting the situation of others.
