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| quote: | Originally posted by Dervish
Ok so what you are saying is this: If someone doesn't have the resources, then that’s just tough?
How does that apply to a child? Presumably they can't pay for it, and if their parents can't? Are they at fault(the child)? Yes the parent is responsible for them but if they can't provide then I don't think the child should be penalised for that.
Even in the animal kingdom a group will look after less able members in some cases, hopefully we’ve managed to progress from that.
In your model of if you can’t pay just die what happens to orphans? Because their parents were weak they will be or something, so it’s natural selection? |
Well given that a child doesn't have the same rights as an adult, I wouldn't place the same responsibilities upon them either. The proper protocol would of course be for the parent or legal guardian of the child (in the case of an orphan this may sometimes be the state) to bear the costs of the medical treatment. Parents or legal guardians unwilling or unable to meet that criterion shouldn't have been allowed to come into that status to begin with. However, that being a somewhat different issue, I wouldn't be opposed to a limited form of public health care available to minors, preferably funded exclusively through additional taxation on those who have children.
But as for an adult, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to bear sole responsibility for their health.
| quote: | I agree that these days people are far to vocal about their rights and tend to decouple that from their responsibilities (in other words shirk them).
However it looks like you are possibly hinting at a bit of physical natural selection (the physically strong survive and so on) which for an extreme case against that we could look to Steven Hawking.
As I say extreme but he is physically weak, but mentally strong. Surely our society has progressed beyond the harder you can hit someone the better you are (which physical natural selection infers).
Maybe I’ve just misread you and you weren’t inferring physical natural selection? |
I think you may be reading a bit too much into what I've written, because I'm not looking to facilitate any type of genetic natural selection at all. What I'd prefer to see, is a natural selection of memes. That is, those ideas and values which people hold that make them more of an asset and less of a burden to society should be encouraged, while those ideas and values which cause people to become a burden upon society should not be encouraged.
Many factors contribute to how much health care a particular person may require, as well as how much they may be able to afford. However, it is my belief that a responsible and hard-working person who manages their finances well and who takes proper care of himself or herself is very unlikely to ever reach a point at which they cannot afford to pay for their own health care. Furthermore, I believe that the tax burden that a universal health-care system would impose upon such individuals would far exceed what their personal health care expenditures would have ever reached were they uninsured, and that this additional financial burden is imposed upon them to the benefit of those individuals who fail to meet such a standard for financial responsibility or personal care in such a way as to ultimately detriment society by encouraging lazy and irresponsible people to continue their problematic behaviors.
I also believe that if irresponsible people were allowed to bear the full weight of the consequences of their decisions, then they would eventually re-evaluate their way of life. And although they might initially blame society for failing to provide them with what they ought to have been able to provide themselves, I believe that many of them, as well as future generations, will instead learn to be more responsible. Although some individuals would no doubt suffer grave consequences which is quite unfortunate, I believe that the long-term consequences affecting many more people of continuing to fail to adequately encourage responsible decision-making as a society are more harmful.
It's easy to look at someone who has poor finances, and is in poor health, and to call it "compassion" to want to help them. However, I fear this vision fails to recognize the compassion that is wanting to help future generations avoid ever being in that situation to begin with by providing a vivid, even painful example of the consequences of poor decisions, or the compassion that is wanting to prevent the waste of society's resources on prolonging the lives of people who essentially committed a gradual suicide - resources that could instead be spent developing new technologies, building infrastructure, and making the world a better place for us and for everyone who will live here after we are gone.
To me, that is a more genuine compassion that the desire to help people avoid suffering the consequences that they very well may have brought upon themselves. It was the sacrifices and the suffering of previous generations which laid the foundation for everything that we have today. Why should we run away so desperately from a few of our own - many of them deserving - having to suffer for the good of the future?
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