Happily, New York state put together a protocol back in 2008 titled “Allocation of Ventilators in a Public Health Disaster” (largely reaffirmed in 2015) designed for a moment like ours. Wisely, our state insists that age and health problems or disabilities unrelated to what is causing the epidemic shouldn’t serve as the basis for rationing. Prognosis for recovery is what matters.
A New York hospital could choose to give its last ventilator to the 72-year-old marathon runner rather than to the 57-year-old pack-a-day smoker. Again, based only on prognosis for recovery. The objectivity of the standard removes much of the physician’s subjective ideology from the picture.
Source: Coronavirus crisis: Deciding how to prioritize hospital patients
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Seems like a good way to ration if it has to be done.
Like the organ donor controversy, the Gooferment makes rules (i.e., you can sell a kidney but you can starve to death; you can’t sell a dead relative’s organs even if you’re dead broke; some rules don’t apply to the elite) and then says “there’s a shortage”.
When ever I hear that there is a “shortage” or “surplus”, I just know deep in my heart that the Gooferment has screwed something up.
Why did we ever put the Gooferment “in charge of health care”? I can’t conceive of what “healthcare” would look like in a Libertarian USA but I’m sure it would be better that what a mess we have now.
The meaning of “health”, “health care”, “health care insurance”, or something else is so muddled we can’t possible extract the Gooferment from it. It’s like “who would build the roads”? Do you think that WalMart, UPS, FedEx, and all the other carriers couldn’t figure it out without, as Tom Woods calls it, a guy with a bullhorn shouting out orders. The truly Free Market would allow an efficient solution to evolve.
If health care was a “free market”, I am sure that Insurance Companies would have hospitals for their insured that would serve their Customers spectacularly. By way of proof, i offer: health insurance, car insurance, and life insurance. Notice the decreasing level of Gooferment “regulation”. Notice, also, the decreasing level of cost and the increasing level of service. Health insurance is a nightmare; life insurance is walk in the park. Could there be a message in this example? Ya think!
So now that the “China / Wuhan / Covid19 / whatever you want to call it” virus has drastically altered our society, let’s use it to create solutions with more freedom and liberty.
REMEMBER: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” — Rahm Emanuel
So let’s use this opportunity to, for example, enshrine “distance learning” and close Gooferment Skrules. Let’s create a national free market in “health”, “health care”, “health care insurance”, or something else. Let’s get the Gooferment out of “health rules & regulations” that prevented “telemedicine”, free exchange of medical records between doctors, terminate the CDC & FDA replacing them with a version of the Consumer Reports. Let’s take the monopoly privileges from Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and the medical cartel forcing them to stand up for their failures — no bailouts or limitations of liability for mistakes.
We’ll all be better off.
In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. — Theodore Roosevelt
Let’s not do “nothing”!
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