This approach makes a lot of sense to me.
However, it should be obvious that there is a major problem with this approach. Do you see what it is?
Also, continuing on my favorite health care theme, I thought you might be interested in reading Tyler Cowen's summary of some of the posts on whether health insurance improves mortality or not. And if it does improve mortality, how many deaths/year does health insurance save? Regular Street Rat Saloon readers should immediately realize by now (using that most famous of scientific "laws"), what I tend to think the answer to this issue is. ;-)
Bonds And Money
1 year ago
5 comments:
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Thai, sweetie....
I was going to post on this subject, but since you just opened the door for me, I will give you my "answer" here :
By now you KNOW that I have a young adult daughter who spent a week in neonatal intensive care, right ?
That she spent the following two years in the equivalent of a home hospitalisation, with me taking care of her when she got sick ?
I sometimes think that I have to rub your nose in it, Thai, because you PERSIST in not acknowledging the point that I'm bringing up, or not seeing its implications.
Now, my young adult has health problems.
We could say that she has a... fragile constitution.
That she may never be able to keep up that work pace that our social body seems to take for granted is a UNIVERSAL requirement for being a "productive" drone in the hive.
Now, Thai... back to your cost/benefit analysis and those 45 000 people.
JUST THINK about how many $$$$$$ that week in intensive care cost. Just think about how many $$$$ the two years of pseudo hospitalisation cost (all paid for by the State, Thai, NOT out of our pockets, directly because you KNOW that nobody could pull those $$$$ out of his or her individual hat).
Think about the fact that my daughter may NEVER earn those $$$$$ which seem to be the have and hold PROOF that she is productive ?
Now... I DARE YOU TO LOOK ME OR HER IN THE FACE AND TELL ME THAT IT WOULD BE BETTER TO SPEND THE $$$$ ANOTHER WAY, THAI.
I DARE YOU TO DO THIS.
When you have finished with the "inevitable" and "essential" cost/benefit analysis, I will tell you that it is PRECISELY this KIND of analysis, and its ideological underpinning that made WW2 possible.
This ideology is at the base of the industrial world.
That is why WW2 was basically... an INDUSTRIAL war.
That is why we will have to get out of the industrial ideology in order for the specter of WW2 to really recede.
And anything else we tell ourselves is just LIES, MORE LIES, and BIGGER LIES.
This, by the way is what Goethe saw, genius that he was...
If you are the person who benefits from spending 9 million a life, I completely agree. But the odds are very very much greater than you are not.
So from the other people's viewpoint, I am quite comfortable look you in the face and say your daughter would be much better off spending the money other ways- of course, not all other ways.
I stick by my guns on that one. Spending 9 million a life is not a statistical good bet for anyone except the person who happened to live.
It was the inability to see the complexity of these issues that led to WW2. There are clearly ways to handle this problem where more people, including your daughter, will be better off.
Further, I would be willing to wager your anarchist's approach is statistically far more likely for lead to your daughter's death.
You are only looking at a few sides of this tennis ball when we know there are a great many sides.
Understand when you get on your bicycle and go to the market, there is a statistical change you will get in an accident and die.
It is not a very great chance, which is why you do not do it. But there is a chance.
But Thai...
My daughter wouldn't even be here if that money had not been spent (probably, at any rate, given the society that we live in now, and the ways that we are currently going about solving our health problems. And here's to finding ways to ensure that she be here WITHOUT all those expensive machines, and medication, which also have THEIR disadvantages, right ?)
THAT'S what I'm talking about...
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