Digital Immigrant

I’m a bit late to this — 2 months or so. Helen Zille wants to debate the meritoriousness of providing state funded health care to those who make wrong lifestyle choices. Jack Bloom has a piece on this in today’s Politicsweb.

She starts off OK by talking about deaf people who need better assistance. This is a valid concern but then she mentions how the state cannot — and shouldn’t — afford to provide medical assistance to those who had inflicted the conditions on themselves.

There is a growing assumption that people have the right to behave as they like, and the state has the responsibility to pay for the consequences.

This is a fair point; however, there will always be a few who take advantage of things, especially things that the government provides.

Thus we spend 80% of the public health budget on the consequences of personal “life-style choices” ranging from unprotected sex, to alcohol and drug abuse, and the resulting trauma and violence.

Unprotected sex happens in marriages, too. It’s impossible to tell who got infected with HIV through their own carelessness. Why wear a condom if I believe that my spouse is faithful? And there are still many rape victims who are too ashamed to admit they had been raped; would these women ask for free Anti-Retrovirals when they’ll have to prove that they are blameless?

Consider two extreme examples. First, a healthy young man, fully aware of the dangers, nevertheless has unprotected sex with multiple partners. He gets Aids and asks that the state should give him antiretroviral drugs free of charge. Should the state provide?

Second, a baby is born partly deaf. Her parents ask that the state provide her with a hearing aid because they cannot afford it. Should the state provide?

We should give both free medical care. We can’t afford not to. The young man might go on to infect many other people if he doesn’t get treated. There’s no reason to believe that he will use condoms henceforth. And what’s to stop the young man from claiming that he got infected through some other method? Who’s going to investigate?

There must now be an equal emphasis on responsibility. The more we spend on treating preventable illnesses, the less there is for the unpreventable conditions that confront many of our citizens with severe challenges throughout their lives.

This is true but let’s also have a debate on which diseases are preventable and which are unpreventable. In that way we’ll have greater clarity. Where do we draw the line? The DA’s arguments are specious and illogical. The people who would be the most hurt by such policies would yet again be women and the poor. Not acceptable.

Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. Is this because doctors who treat Mormons are better, or because Mormons avoid a lot of things that shorten people’s lives?

I’d like to see the source for Jack’s statistic.

Smokers have a tough time in Britain’s National Health Service as they are often denied heart surgery when over a certain age. Obese people are sometimes denied joint replacements. These decisions are defended on clinical grounds, taking into account risk factors and chances of survival.

This sounds like an appeal to popularity claim to me; they’re doing it over in the UK so let’s implement it here, too. Yes, we’re allowed to look at what other countries are doing and adopt their practices — but only if it makes sense, ethically and financially.

The debate we should be having is one about mismanagement of money, ie, corruption and theft. And let’s not forget about the poor salaries, which may be why state hospitals struggle to attract and retain staff.

Let’s give everyone an equal opportunity, whether they had intended to inflict pain onto themselves through bad lifestyle choices or not. Because, really, who lives a perfect life, full of the most perfect health choices?

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