Republicans and Libertarians -a health care question....

[dead0man]

I'm actually not against "universal coverage"...I'm just not sure how we are going to properly compensate the people coming up with the new drugs, technologies, etc if it's all government run.  Who is going to decide if that 55 year old meth addict is going to get a new liver or not.  Clearly everybody can't get ALL the care they need and anybody that tells you they can is a liar with an agenda or an ignorant with an agenda.  Some people are going to get better care than others.  In our current system it's the people with good insurance or tons of money.  There are others that get excellent care without either, but there are others that need the care that can't get it.  It certainly isn't always fair.

But what if the govt takes over, doesn't have the money to properly compensate the people that need compensating and those talented people start doing something else?  What if the lack of compensation causes new drugs or new technologies to not come to market on time or not at all?  People don't figure this sh**t out out of the goodness of their heart, they do it for a pay check.  If you (or more likely, a company) cure cancer, you (or the company) deserve to be a kajabillionare.  We're already running into the problem of not enough doctors practicing certain kinds of medicine in certain places because it's just not worth it even though there is a shortage of them.  If everybody is getting care this will only be worse.  Where will the hundreds of thousands of new doctors come from?

All that said, I still think the BEST system would involve a government safety net.  There is no reason to bankrupt a lower middle class family because mom got breast cancer at 37.  And there is no reason to screw City Hospital because mom (and a thosand other people) didn't pay her bill. I don't know what the solution is or how it would work, but the current system certainly isn't as good as it should be.  I'm not going to say it's broken, because it obviously isn't for the majority of us.  I'm thinking something like catastrophic coverage for everybody and more clinics for the less catastrophic care.  There should be places to go where people can have their kid get a cast put on their leg that isn't a hospital, doesn't require an over worked doctor to look at it and doesn't cost $7000.