Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/15/crowdfunding-for-medical-costs.html
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Bioethicists have long wrestled with how public healthcare resources should be allocated when there is not enough for everyone.
How about when there is enough for everyone?
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When there is, “free” market extremists will wrestle with how public healthcare resources should be artificially limited – especially those who benefit directly from the inefficiencies and (based on this article) depravities emerging from the current broken U.S. system.
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Brave researchers venturing into the savage jungles of American healthcare.
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It’s so exciting that The Best Health Care System in the World™ is disrupting the insurance markets by forcing poor people to transfer what little wealth they have between themselves in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to get health care.
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well, guess which libertarian fatalistic-opportunist piece of shit isn’t winning any donations from me…
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Well since that FT article is 100% paywalled (maybe I should crowdfund some money to see it?), I’ll just leave these here:
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There are all kinds of people out there who are not putting their medical knowledge to use, and all kinds of people who need medical knowledge. Maybe a Venture Capitalist will give me $1B to make an app called Doctr. ($100 to get a university student to make a chat room for me, the rest for my salary)
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Suffering people publicly have to play clown to save their lives. That’s some horrible dystopian shit(hole).
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Literally.
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Well, that’s pretty much what health insurance does.
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Next thing you know, poor people in the USA will reinvent mutual insurance…
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One problem—or feature, depending on your point of view—with crowdfunding, charity, and even mutual insurance, is that you get to decide who deserves to be cured, and you can exclude people that you don’t like or you don’t approve of. You get to allow your racism, fears, or phobias play a role on your decision.
Somebody out there has to be thinking already of a sick reality TV program in which people get to compete to be cured. A way to “monetize” and profit the suffering of people for the good of the quarterly earnings report. indeed.
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You’re probably right. I need a drink or five, now.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily true with mutual insurance. Unless the USA managed to fuck up this concept too?
From the list of mutual insurance companies in the Wikipedia article, it seems that mutual insurance is already part of the health insurance mess in the US, e.g. Health Care Service Corporation. What I was referring to were mutual insurance outfits like USAA that get to decide who can join. If I am not mistaken, it used to be that some trade unions—that also play a role in mutual insurance—were segregated and excluded POC from their ranks.
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I realized after posting that my wording was a bit unfair. In France mutual insurances started out organized by and to the benefit of specific professions. Nowadays though, many are open to all, and I’m not even sure they are allowed to revert back to being restricted. What I meant is it’s probably possible to set up a mutual insurance as statutorily open to all to begin with, but I’m aware that it must be horribly complicated.
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I understand. The issue is whether any mutual insurance group can let people with pre-existing or congenital conditions join in paying the same as other members. I think that it would not work. The only fair, workable, reasonable, and compassionate solution is taxpayer-funded universal health insurance.
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Let me state this. I feel ashamed of living in a country in which some people need to accept or ask for charity in order to be able to afford needed medical procedures. This is not necessary, this is cruel and demeaning.
