Health Care

Health care is a tough issue. Being in the health care industry I am torn between access to care for all economic classes vs. the financial rewards of being a health care provider.

My thoughts are:
1. The amount of time, effort, sacrifice, and money I invested into become a dentist should exact a financial reward in at least direct proportion.
2. Health care in not a "right" it is a privilege. Just because we can treat people, doesn't mean we are morally obligated to do so no matter the cost.
3. If somebody can go to free clinic and get certain treatment, they wont generally go to a regular clinic and pay for those same services.
4. If we were to exclude government from any and all health care systems, we would see non-profit type industries filling in, and that access to care levels would not be any less than they are now.
5. If health care were to become totally socialized then I would be paying double, 1 in taxes to supporrt the system, and 2 in loss of compensation.

Anyways, here is a video on Obama's healthcare plan.


Post Script: I read an article in the AGD Impact regarding universal healthcare with a dentist twist. Some highlights:

Gladwell sees America drifting away from universal care. He identifies two
philosophies of health insurance. The first, called social insurance, assumes
that insurance is supposed to be “socially redistributive”—that it should help
equalize the risk between the healthy and the sick. Medicare is a social
insurance, as are the universal plans of most industrialized nations. The second
kind of insurance is actuarial, in which people look for plans based on their
individual needs and pay based on their personal situation and history.
Actuarial insurance, represented by the majority of private health policies in
America, means sicker people pay higher premiums and the sickest people can’t
get coverage at all. Health Savings Accounts, Gladwell writes, are a “final,
irrevocable step in the actuarial direction.”

As Alice Thomson of the London Telegraph writes, “In Britain today, you can
stuff yourself on deep-fried Mars bars, drink 20 pints a night, inject yourself
with heroin, smoke 60 cigarettes a day, or decide to change your sex—and the NHS
has an obligation to treat you…but if you have bad teeth, forget it.”

It seems the catch-phrase for this generation is "Redistribution". Do I want to pay for people that get sick more than me? Some, at no fault of their own, have all sorts of health problems, but others because of their lifestyle have self imposed health problems. I certainly don't want to pay for them.

The biggest overall problem with any issue such as this is that I don't trust government to be able to manage anything to acceptable level of efficiency.