Healthcare thread

[CRedskinsRule]

As Matty said in the coronavirus thread, Healthcare continues to be a huge issue for the country, and the solutions are as varied as left is to right, or up is to down.

But I wanted to comment on the quote Matty posted, without making the Coronavirus thread subject to a political de-evolution.

Originally Posted by MTK

Something to think about...

@AnandWrites
Coronavirus makes clear what has been true all along. Your health is as safe as that of the worst insured, worst cared for person in your society. It will be decided by the height of the floor, not the ceiling.

I would argue this is patently false. Our worse cared for person would be a homeless drug addict on a Baltimore street. Society as a whole has a far better chance of health than that person. But it is even more false than that obvious point.

Let's take a hypothetical virus that has struck the US, and seems to be making inroads into society enough to scare the upper 5%. So much so that a billionaire funds a deep dive study to find a vaccine faster than the government is able to. Further assume that the billionaire finds the vaccine. If the vaccine is proven safe, the government would be able to claim crisis and mass produce that vaccine.

That is the extreme, but every day, the richest people are looking for medical advances that the poorest of society could never afford. There are so many examples of processes initially created for the wealthy that now make the lives of poorer individuals better. MRI's, Lasik, CatScans, Chemotherapy. It is still true that the poorest of our society doesn't have all the benefits medically of the richest, but for someone like me, living a low middle class life, my doctors have far more tools available to them because the US ceiling of healthcare is far higher than the floor.

That doesn't mean I want the homeless drug addict on Baltimore's street to not be given care, I do. It just means his condition does not set the health condition of our society. Even in transmittable diseases, the homeless person benefits from the understanding of how viruses are transmitted, and the sanitizing products that become available from greater understanding and capitalistic opportunities.

Bottomline is that innovation is created by wealth trying to make more wealth, but there has to be compassion from society for those who are struggling especially when it's due to mental health conditions or other disabilities that are not self created.