- Reform is mandatory - Reform will need to take place in multiple steps over time. It's too large a system to overhaul at once. - There is no perfect solution. This is so important. In this case perfect really is the enemy of good enough. Or even, better than what we have right now. People going bankrupt because they had an accident -- not cool.
Aside from that, what bothers me the most about the debate in general is the element of blaming the victim that I see a lot of.
There are diseases and injuries that are self-inflicted, no doubt about it. But when I see (in other fora) that we should deny care to ill people who brought their illness on themselves, I get the chills. For one thing, there's the fat police that want to punish people for being fat. There are subtle overtones of racism and of hating poor people in many of those discussions.
I also wonder where it ends? If we deny care to those who slowly bring death on themselves, why not those who are self-violent? Cutters? Suicides? What about women who stay with abusers? At what age is an abused child old enough that if it doesn't run away from the abusive situation, we deny care?
What about other types of slow self-inflicted harm? Alcoholics? (Good luck drawing the line between an alcoholic and a heavy drinker.) Drug abusers? Prescription drug abusers? HIV-positive? There are so many shades of grey and judgment calls that it turns into a nightmare of arbitrariness for the person who needs care, or a quagmire of appeals that jams up the whole system.
The blame the victim mentality exists in other countries too. It's just that once you start looking into trying to enforce society's standards it becomes obvious very quickly that it's not workable so except for relatively easy, well-defined cases (no lung transplant unless you stop smoking, e.g.), it's very quickly abandoned.
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Date: 2009-08-15 05:26 am (UTC)- Reform will need to take place in multiple steps over time. It's too large a system to overhaul at once.
- There is no perfect solution.
This is so important. In this case perfect really is the enemy of good enough. Or even, better than what we have right now. People going bankrupt because they had an accident -- not cool.
Aside from that, what bothers me the most about the debate in general is the element of blaming the victim that I see a lot of.
There are diseases and injuries that are self-inflicted, no doubt about it. But when I see (in other fora) that we should deny care to ill people who brought their illness on themselves, I get the chills. For one thing, there's the fat police that want to punish people for being fat. There are subtle overtones of racism and of hating poor people in many of those discussions.
I also wonder where it ends? If we deny care to those who slowly bring death on themselves, why not those who are self-violent? Cutters? Suicides? What about women who stay with abusers? At what age is an abused child old enough that if it doesn't run away from the abusive situation, we deny care?
What about other types of slow self-inflicted harm? Alcoholics? (Good luck drawing the line between an alcoholic and a heavy drinker.) Drug abusers? Prescription drug abusers? HIV-positive? There are so many shades of grey and judgment calls that it turns into a nightmare of arbitrariness for the person who needs care, or a quagmire of appeals that jams up the whole system.
The blame the victim mentality exists in other countries too. It's just that once you start looking into trying to enforce society's standards it becomes obvious very quickly that it's not workable so except for relatively easy, well-defined cases (no lung transplant unless you stop smoking, e.g.), it's very quickly abandoned.