To those against UHC, what would you do in this hypothetical?

In this Pit thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=538568, I presented a hypothetical to someone who is against government supported healthcare apparently because he doesn’t believe money from strangers should be unwillingly used for someone else’s medical care.

This is what I presented him with:

  1. Your child needs a transplant to live.
  2. The cost of the operation is very expensive. Like hundreds of thousands of dollars over and beyond that which is covered by your insurance, assuming you have any.
  3. You qualify for government-supported assistance that completely waives these costs.
  4. You don’t have the means to pay for the transplant and associated treatments from your own pocket. This means that to even consider paying any of this expense, you’d have to solicit donations (AKA begging), sell your furniture and jewlery, bake a whole lot of cookies and pies, and use other means to raise money.

The questions are:

  1. Do you accept the government support.
  2. Or do you not.

To those who are against the public option because you think the government needs to stay out of healthcare, I’d be interested in hearing what you would choose in this hypothetical situation and why you’d choose it. And if you think this hypothetical is too outlandish and fantasy-like to entertain, also explain why you think that. “Because I’m adequately insured so this is unrealistic” is not being fair to the hypothetical.

Not a hard dilemma.

Even if someone doesn’t want gov’t health care to exist, it does exist in your hypothetical. So they could take advantage of it without being a hypocrite.

First off, the scenario is the usual one offered by UHC proponents. This is where the problem comes in.

Simply put, we don’t lookat the issue in the same way. You want to talk about poor little babies and innocent grandmas who will surely die without the government’s assistance. We tend to look at the “Big Picture” and what it will do to the country. You want to focus on sweet adorable faces and we look at the body as a whole.

Second, we don’t necessarily have problems with government programs for the needy. What we generally oppose are measures which increase government control over healthcare, which is exactly what we see in the Democrat’s plan. This is because said plan(s) are poorly written, intended to create something they vaguely want which they will simply fiddle with endlessly later, and which have previously been failures at their stated goals while causing considerably economic disruption and budget crunching.

The reason we oppose govenrment control over healthcare varies considerably. For my money, it’s because I’m willing to sacrifice healthcare today (even my own, and even that of my fellow citizens) so that our children and their children can have better medicine, whereas the government wants to push down on all prices (but not costs, which they confuse with prices because they are morons), drive out private profits, and control what services people get in the name of the “greater good.” I want more drugs, even if they are expensive at first,a nd more and better treatments, even if they cost a fortune, so that the drugs will go off-patent sooner and the treatments will be improved and made cheaper. And we have the best possible proof that private industry does this far better and more reliably than any government.

Third, even supposedly inadequate insurance often deals well with far-fetched emergency scenarios like you present. This is because on average the ludicrously expensive scenarios are also exceedingly rare, which makes them quite cheap on a per-person basis, often amount to a small fraction of overall costs. It may require a few calls to push the insurance people, but insurance usually pays for it.

Fourth, your question is irrelevant and irrational. I do not have a problem with people who take advantage of government programs, even if they have a general objection tot he existence of the program, provided that neither the program nor their usage is intrinsically morally wrong. While I strive for an ideal world, I also recognize and accept the fatc that we still live in a poor representation thereof.

Edit:

Another issue which seperates us is that most UHC-proponents call healthcare a RIGHT. This is basically an example fo the rampant stupidity in humanity. Healthcare is emphatically not a right, never has been, and probably never will be, and is the perfect demonstration of why Positive Rights are the inbred bastard cousin of Negative Rights. Negative Rights only require that someone leave you alone and not bother you. Posituive Rights, if taken seriously, require human slavery.

If you have a so-called right to good health or at least good healthcare, you are claiming the authority to force other people to work and labor for your health or healthcare. There is no logical evasion to this, period, end of story. None. However, believers don’t let a little thing like logic get in their way. Instead, they demand it as a right and claim with endlessly tinkered rules and regulations that they can somehow make it come out all right. It doesn’t work like that. Eventually, they usually fall back on claiming it’s the “greater good,”, which even if it true, is not the same thing as a right.

Isn’t that like saying you can be against abortion, but since it’s legal, you can get one without being called a hypocrite? Okay, maybe that’s true. But it would be such a strong case of cognitive dissonance that I have to wonder if hypocrisy wouldn’t be better.

No. Most people who are forced to pay into a system will happily take advantage of the same system when it is needed. It isn’t hypocritical at all.

It’s called getting what you pay for.

I appreciate the time and attention to put into your post, smiling bandit, and I understand that this is how many people against UHC feel and/or believe. I work in public health and know very well the fundamentals of utilitarism. This is why I’m in favor of UHC.

Can you answer the question I posed, though? Although the subject is about your hypothetical kid, I’m not aiming for an emotional appeal along the lines of “Won’t you think of the children?!!!” I think a lot of us our prepared to sacrifice ourselves for our own ideals, but not our dependents. I could just as easily asking about a spouse or a elderly parent.

Yeah, but they are using money that was taken from other people against their wishes. If you have a problem with this when it’s someone else’s kid who benefits, why should you stop having this problem when it’s your kid?

What? You’re paying into a system. You use the system. End of discussion.

Your money will fund other people’s surgeries down the road. Other people’s money pays for you when you have a medical issue in the private system.

People aren’t opposed to health care. They’re opposed to having more choices taken away from them.

No. It’s more like when everybody goes together to order a pizza, and you want pepperoni but everybody else wants sausage, so that’s what is ordered. Evidently in your world, you’re a hypocrite to eat a slice when it arrives.

Damn, there went my resolution.

People aren’t opposed to healthcare, you’re right. But people are opposed to paying higher taxes to support healthcare for other people. Isn’t that right?

If you’re strongly against sausage pizza and think it’s bad to eat, why wouldn’t you just order your own pizza and let the others have theirs? Since this is a perfectly legitimate option for someone philosophically against sausage, I would most certainly consider you a victim of cognitive dissonance if you didn’t even think to exercise this choice.

Nor, it’s more like trying to forbid everyone else from ordering pizza together at all, because doing anything as a group is Communism! and Slavery! Then eating the pizza when it comes anyway.

No, Communism is more like some people wanting pizza, and you say “No thanks, I’m not hungry”, and they make you pay for it anyway, and then when you want to eat a slice, they say “No, because you just ate a sandwich and don’t need a slice. We haven’t eaten since lunch, so we should get it all.” Then they invade the next apartment over so they can make them pay for pizza too.

But it all collapses in the end because, frankly, the people are sick of eating pizza and would maybe like a salad for something. But the leaders who know better keep ordering it anyway and they have a big stack of extra pizzas and very little money left, so they stop paying the delivery man. Then the pizza place stops delivering and after the extra pizza just sits on the table, getting all moldy and isn’t fit to eat anymore. Everybody ends up hungry AND broke because nobody in the apartment can actually cook for themselves anymore.

Yes, that is right. What is your point?

Actually, the second part isn’t even right. Most people I know who are opposed to UHC would be okay with an option that just took care of the people who couldn’t afford health care.

I’m not being hard to get along with, but you are terrible at analogies. This one is awful, but not as bad as the abortion one. Nobody is opposed to sausage pizza. They are opposed to being forced to order sausage pizza when they’d rather be free to order pepperoni.

Quite frankly, I cant even believe you’re taking this attitude. It’s extremely easy to see how someone can be opposed to being forced to pay into a certain system, yet still use the system when the situation arises.

If you can name one drug that was researched, developed, and patented in the last 20 years without previously being researched by basic scientists, I’ll buy a hat and eat it. Without Pubmed, Pfizer would be a vitamin company and Apple would be Sony. The vast majority of research in the U.S is financed by the government. <shrug> I hereby grant you 20 experience points for reading this.

  • Honesty

And you might actually have a point, if UHC was remotely the same as Communism.

Because they’re going to make me pay for their pizza. If I’m paying, I’m eating. It’s not hypocritical to say “I don’t want sausage pizza and I don’t want to pay for it. Oh, you’re taking my money by force? Then I’m eating some of the pizza.”

If with UHC, there were an option to not eat nor pay for the pizza, then I’d be fine and dandy with letting whoever order whatever topping they want.

This is exactly how I see it. I’m going to be annoyed that my money was taken from me without my consent, but I’m not going to stage a hunger strike and thereby make a bad situation worse.

So fuck everyone else’s kids, cause your kids got his?

Why is it okay for your kid but other kids aren’t good enough? Oh wait you’re the poster who wants the unfortunate dieing in the streets, and teens to starve. No surprise.