Obama’s Health Plan and Stage IV Cancer
One of the most heated debates about the proposed health care reform plan is over the possibility of withholding treatment for people with low potential for recovery and those with limited contribution to society. The focus of this debate is primarily on the elderly. There is logical and historical reason to not place the fate of any sector of society totally in the hands of government. Of course, I do not believe that our government would ever take a Nazi approach to valuing human life. Nonetheless, it is not good ethics in public policy to open the door to such a possibility. The proposed public option, single payer health care concept certainly cracks that door open. I think we should consider it a given that a public “option” insurance would eventually be a public “universal” insurance. Insurance companies will ultimately not withstand the competition from government programs with unlimited taxpayer funds and enforceable policy in their favor. Once the government is in complete control of funding and managing health care, medical practice will no longer be driven and controlled by the market place of consumer demand. That would leave medical patients vulnerable.
God forbid that this nation ever gets to that point, but it could happen. In addition to the issue of elderly patients not qualifying for treatment is an issue I have not heard anything about yet–terminal cancer patients. At Stage IV, cancer becomes a chronic disease that, although sometimes controllable for a time, will ultimately claim the victim’s life. Personally, if I am ever diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and can’t be guaranteed several years of reasonably healthy existence, I will refuse anything other than pain medication and give my immune system every advantage I can access. However, the freedoms on which our country was founded gives each of us the right to choose how we want to treat Stage IV cancer as well as any other health problem. Under our present system, most oncologists will continue to fight Stage IV cancer with everything they have available. It is simply vital to our cultural values to extend life as long as the patient has the will to do so. If, for any reason, a doctor or insurance company refused to honor our desires, we would seek other options. Under government controlled health care, there would be no other options. We can deny that the government would ever take such measures, and I don’t believe it would. But, should we voluntarily accept that risk unnecessarily, particularly when there are reasonable alternatives?
Health care reform should be lower cost care (read tort reform and drug testing reform), increased choice of providers and medicines, more freedom in medical practice, and broader scoped medical research.
September 24th, 2009 at 21:06
The competition adds an invaluable element to our current healthcare system that wouldn’t be there in a government run healthcare system. With competition doctors try to do their best to draw patients to their practices, but under a government run healthcare system they would have not motivation to do their best.