Just to shove my oar in and raise a point that has not yet surfaced here:
**It is entirely possible that advances in screening will make universal care the only morally justifiable approach. **
It is already extremely difficult to get insurance if you have a pre-existing condition, such that it is often comparable to simply paying for the treatment oneself. Techniques are advanceing to the point where almost all such conditions could be flagged up by a single DNA test.
If a nation’s health is left to law-of-the-jungle insurance, then the most successful companies will be the ones who somehow predict their clients’ future needs incredibly accurately and charge accordingly. It would be in their financial interests to perform such a test (possibly even on the envelope you sent in if they could be sure it was you who licked it), which would necessitate enormous premiums for those who “failed” the test.
One’s financial viability would thereby become an accident of birth. Such a situation would surely be morally bankrupt.
But how would it be morally bankrupt? Assuming your scenario, you have just doomed the people without such conditions to pay for the ones who have it. And you have said that they have a right to force healthy people to take care of the sick. Remember, the operative word is force.
I don’t think your scenario changes the essential question at all. It merely changes the time at which needs are detected. If I hold (and I do) that a person diagnosed with cancer does not have a right to force me to help him, then I certainly can say that a person with a known genetic disposition for cancer (even one which makes it very likely for him to develop the condition) does not have the right to force aid either.
The moral question here is: Do we have an obligation to care for those less fortunate, regardless of the choices they made to lead to their plight? Some people get into bad situations through no fault of their own. Others do so because they are irresponsible.
Assuming we have a responsibility to care for those in a no fault manner, is it worth throwing people in jail if they don’t want to do it? Because that’s what we do. We take people’s money at gunpoint for our social engineering. Couldn’t a case be made that this is even more morally reprehensible than not caring for the poor?
Well, I would argue that we do not have an obligation (which allows the needy to use force) even in the case where they are destitute through no fault of their own.
I don’t have any problem helping poor people out. I can even understand the argument that society as a whole is better off with a stable safety net. I simply object to the proposal that they have a right to my help.
Steal underpants. 2. Universal Health Care. 3. Profit?
I’m all for extending the safety net, without enabling every hypochondriac in the universe to go to the doctor on my dime. I like the emergency care system, if hospitals make a good faith effort to live up to the requirments. Somehow we must balance, people! Especially those fatty acids. Oh, and start exercising. If I’m paying for your health care, don’t make me come over and beat your ass! Five drinks? You’re cut off, jackass!
We need to take the advantages of a private system (many) and extend the benefits down better. That’s hardly impossible. There is a nice identified pool of the uninsured, apparently. Some of them may have to go in an assigned risk pool, or the health approximation.
I’m not saying that as a society we should just let people die. Really. But, should I have to pay for (heh) Rush Limbaugh’s repeated attempts to clean himself up?
Exactly. Welfare should be justified on practical grounds, on the benefit it produces for society as a whole. Compassion is bad public policy. Any policy based on emotion is a bad one.
