Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Being Incredibly Rich Gets You Better Healthcare

From the department of the blindingly obvious comes this CNN article on Steve Jobs and his liver transplant: "Did Steve Jobs' money buy him a faster liver transplant?" The author, Ray Hainer, actually asks that as a serious question. Most of the article is utterly pointless. It doesn't matter what system you have, what reforms are in place, or what changes you make, someone with $5.7 billion in net worth is always going to have better options that the average person. That's the problem with many of the people pushing healthcare "reform." They have no sense of reality. They live in a dreamworld where government controls actually decrease costs. At the end of the article there are a couple of quotes from medical ethics professor, that demonstrate the lack of real-world thinking.
The inequity revealed in the liver transplant process is symptomatic of the larger inequalities in the American health-care system
There will never be a situation where there are no inequalities. The best possible care is always going to go to those with the best resources, whether that means money, government connections, or some other factor depending on the system.
"Steve Jobs' transplant is relevant to why we need some health reform."
If you are basing a need for health reform on the disparity between one of the world's richest men, and an average person, then you don't have the requisite analytical ability to even be discussing the topic in any sort of meaningful way.

3 comments:

  1. that's definitely a "well, duh" kinda moment there.

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  2. Yeah, up next at CNN: Does Bill Gates have better insurance coverage than the average cab driver?

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  3. Case in point: Even in countries with national health care, you still need private insurance to get decent care. I've had several UK friends over the years who moaned about this. In the UK, if you don't have private insurance, you wait months for a doctor appointment, sick or not.

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