Health Care

My brother wrote a post about health care over on his blog. I attempted to leave a comment, but discovered that I had written so much that it might have been truncated. So I’m posting that comment here instead.

Read his post first.

“Some speculations:

1. What about communal responsibility and character? That is, yes, we have our own personal responsibility and character than we need to be concerned about, but as a community of Christians, we should be looking out for the well-being of the poor and needy among us. Yes, this should be the community of Christians (in other words, the church), but is getting help with this task from a secular body (the government) so bad? Or is there something deeper here as well? I suspect that, similar to capitalism vs socialism (or communism; I don’t know my systems well enough), people would argue that having the government help deprives us of motivation to help our neighbor, but is that a problem with the system or with us as Christians?
2. It’s good to have the sense of personal responsibility and control. I’ve heard that a good way to help people whose lives are a mess is to get them to do/change one small thing, such as washing their car. Doing that task helps them feel in control of their circumstances again, makes them feel good for accomplishing something, etc. I’ve been told that in Canada, people actually go to the doctor instead of waiting because “I don’t have the money.” Which sounds like a good thing—preventative care instead of purely reactive care. Of course, it’s not always a good thing (“going to the hospitals/ER for no good reason”), but when you have a health concern, it seems that it would be better to deal with it early, rather than wait. That’s a reason for taking care of ourselves in the first place, correct? To prevent problems and complications later? That said, it seems to me that having costs largely reduced can fit both of those criteria. Ideally, people will go in earlier because it’s not such a cost burden (assuming health is a priority for them and they are not being foolhardy) and they will continue to feel that it is their responsibility and that they are taking care of themselves. However, I still wonder how that relates to the truly poor among us (see first point).
3. It’s hard to know what’s really true sometimes with different health care systems. Certainly I can see how government control could easily tend towards long wait times, longer lines, etc. But it does seem that we largely know of these things by personal stories, which don’t always reflect the larger picture. As a contrast, I know of a Canadian who was having back trouble and while their surgery wasn’t scheduled for some time (don’t recall the specifics, perhaps a month?), the surgery was pushed up because the pain was too great and that made the surgery a much higher priority. Is that typical? I don’t know. Just tossing out another example.
4. Along with the previous two points, I’ve been told that though some wait times may be longer, the surgeries don’t tend to be as major, so some leeway is acceptable. This is paired with the point that since people visit doctors earlier, problems are caught earlier, and the solutions or surgeries don’t need to be as major. This seems to make sense, though I don’t know how well it works out in practice.

I have no conclusion on the matter. I simply wanted to bring up some things that have been brought to my attention that seem worth consideration (and yes, it’s probably easy to figure out where my information came from regarding Canada).”