Is Health Insurance Socialism?

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by TheBigDog

It is not quite the same thing...

Oh.
Of course!
My bad.

You're right. Sorry I said such stupid things.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by TheBigDog

Mike made mention of how in Australia they rounded up people with TB for 18 months of treatment. Unfortunately such actions violate the civil liberties of the infected. And it represents one of the slippery slope aspects of socializing medicine that gives it a bad rep in the US.

To my knowledge, no US court has found an instance of the involuntary quarantine of a person suspected of transmitting an easily transmitted, highly lethal disease, un-Constitutional. From a legal perspective, I believe, such people may be committed because they pose a danger to the public, much as may be a violently mentally ill person. Recall that the US Constitution does not unconditionally affirm the right of the People to liberty, etc, only assure that that government cannot abridge such rights without “due process of law”.

A famous case of a US citizen involuntarily quarantined for much of her life was “typhoid” Mary Mallon, who is believed to have caused many illnesses and 3 deaths from typhoid fever (to which she was immune) between 1901 and 1915.

Less dramatic curtailment of privileges are common in the various state and district public school systems, many of which refuse admission to students who have not received routine vaccination. (see, for example, The 1/23/2007 Washington Post article ”No Class For Those Without Vaccines”). Such requirements have recently received much attention, as several states have implemented regulations requiring that 11-year-old girls who attend public school receive HPV vaccine, even though the HPV virus is transmitted only by sexual contact, is typically lethal only to women (as a cause of cervical cancer), and some worry that such vaccination will encourage under-age sex.

[Michaelangelica]

Controversial Michael Moore Flick 'Sicko' Will Compare U.S. Health Care With Cuba's

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted April 23, 2007.

Moore's new film, debuting in Cannes this May, tackles the failures of the U.S. health care system and includes a segment where 9/11 rescue workers visit Cuba for treatment they couldn't get in America.
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To state that controversy and Michael Moore go hand and hand is to utter the obvious, and Moore's latest film Sicko will clearly be no exception.

Sicko, which will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is a comic broadside against the state of American health care, including the mental health system. The film targets drug companies and the HMOS in the richest country in the world -- where the most money is spent on health care, but where the U.S. ranks 21st in life expectancy among the 30 most developed nations, obviously in part due to the fact that 47 million people are without health insurance.

The timing of Moore's film is propitious. Twenty-two percent of Americans say that health care is the most pressing issue in America.

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Controversial Michael Moore Flick 'Sicko' Will Compare U.S. Health Care With Cuba's

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Cuba has a long history of welcoming publicity like this. In the (largely pre-www – sorry for the lack of links ) 1980s and 90s, much was made of a small number – tens, or at most, hundreds - of un- and under-insured Americans traveling - in most cases illegally – to Cuba to for HIV/AIDS care – mostly palliative care until they died.

Although these cases, and the respiratory illness sufferers featured in Moore’s upcoming films, are clearly being used by individuals and governments for propaganda purposes, which is distasteful, that doesn’t alter the objective facts they reveal, which are encouraging. Despite having far fewer resources (per capita GDP $3900 vs $43444) than the US, in many practical areas, health care in Cuba is equal to or even better than in the US. For example, the HIV infection rate is about .1% in Cuba, vs. about .6% in the US. From my optimistic perspective, this suggest that other poor countries, such as Uganda (HIV rate 4.1%, pcGPD $1,700), can improve their health care to levels comparable to Cuba and the US without necessarily increasing their GPD by factors of 10+. (source: HIV and AIDS in the Caribbean, HIV and AIDS in America, List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

If Moore’s new film can promote this optimistic message, I believe it will have performed a valuable public service. IMHO, debates about which countries are better than one another are less important than ones about promoting health care world wide.