David Delgado/The Daily Cougar
As with any public good, health care is often a strongly contested resource. Arguments in the US over who deserves access to care reached a fever pitch last year during the health care reform debate.
In the UK, a battle has ensued over whether the National Health Service should provide coverage for women to have faulty breast implants removed.
Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of women who received breast implants manufactured by the French firm Poly Implant Prothese do not know if their implants are safe.
Many implants manufactured by the company were made with industrial grade rather than medical grade silicon. Industrial grade silicon has been shown to leak or rupture at much higher rates. To make matters worse, the firm kept its records poorly, and it is unknown which or even how many implants are made of the correct material.
The French and Dutch governments have advised preventative removal of all PIP implants. British health officials have determined that removal is not necessary without evidence of rupture, but will cover the costs of removing the implants for concerned women.
Unfortunately, discussion of the NHS decision has largely devolved into character attacks against cosmetic surgery patients. Because women choose to be fitted with implants, many believe that they should be financially responsible for their removal even if necessary. However, these detractors are forgetting that a growing number of breast cancer patients get implants after a mastectomy. But even if a woman purchased implants simply to be happier with her body, her health is worth no less than that of any other person.
When insurers — public or private — deny coverage, they also withhold care by extension. Women who purchase implants often save for months or years to afford the operation. Simply because an individual was able to afford the initial procedure does not mean she can afford to have them removed.
After all, the implants were inappropriately manufactured — neither patient nor physician had reason to suspect these complications. The NHS has encouraged private clinics that placed the implants to replace them at no cost, but because the clinics purchased the implants in good faith from a reputable manufacturer, they may not be willing to take responsibility.
One large clinic, The Harley Medical Group, which fit more than 14,000 of the suspect implants in the UK, has already refused to replace the implants for free. They claim that the cost of replacing the implants would put them out of business. The manufacturer, PIP is now defunct with many a claim on the firm’s assets.
If the NHS were to refuse to pay for the replacement or removal of the implants many women would have no choice but to leave the implants in place. If these implants rupture, the trauma can cause infections and disfiguring scarring.
Breast implants may be elective, but so is eating an unhealthy diet. Many of our daily activities may not be the best decisions for our health — this is no reason to deny access to life-saving care. In truth, the societal consequences of changeable health behavior are vast.
Cigarette smoking costs the nation an average of $92 billion annually. As of 2009, costs related to obesity reached $147 billion a year and are expected to reach $344 billion by 2018. But we would not consider denying coverage of emphysema care for ex-smokers. We would not base cardiac surgery coverage on BMI.
Health care is a public good, but it is also a human right. We cannot open the door to denying coverage and care to individuals because we disagree with their decisions.
It was not the patients fitted with PIP implants that were wrong in this, but the manufacturer that knowingly endangered patients to cut costs. We cannot hold the victims responsible for the manufacturer’s crime.
Emily Brooks is an economics senior and may be reached at [email protected].
This entire story is a perfect example of how absurd public debate becomes when whole industries are socialized by national governments. Instead of discussing how best to protect individual liberty and property, they insead degenerate into discussing the most intimate personal and financial matters of others to decide who should pay for what.
Secondly, healthcare is absolutely NOT a "human right." Healthcare is not something that simply exists ex-ante in the world, nor does it descend on a moonbeam for our personal benefit. "Healthcare" is the pruduct of someone's labor. You cannot have the "right" to someone else's labor – that's called slavery.
>Secondly, healthcare is absolutely NOT a "human right." Healthcare is not something that simply exists ex-ante in the world, nor does it descend on a moonbeam for our personal benefit. "Healthcare" is the pruduct of someone's labor. You cannot have the "right" to someone else's labor – that's called slavery.
Slavery is "having a right to someone's labor?" So what do you call the military? A massive slave gang? Everyone in the country has the right to the services provided by the military.
"Never let your principles stand in the way of doing what's right."
I give you the job of telling people they are going to die because they didn't inherit their parents' business. You can start with your grandmother, she has terminal cancer.
Military in the USA is by someones good will to protect his country. military is a way the people decided to keep them selves safe. what dose it have to do with health care?
That 'someone' is the taxpayer. If the taxpayer chooses to provide one universal good (that I guarantee not everyone agrees with), why can't they choose to provide another?
What is with people nowadays wanting others to cover the risk they take? And like Steven pointed out healthcare is not a human right.
Public Good has a very specific meaning and it is not what you apparently think it is. The fact that the government is highly involved in something does not mean it is non-rival(one persons use does not affect another's use) and non-excludable (one cannot be prevented from receiving the benefit of the good).
What is it that makes something a "Public Good" to you? If you are going to change the definition you need to tell us what you mean.
"As with any public good, health care is often a strongly contested resource."
No, a public good is uncontested, by it's very definition. We may fight about how much military spending we want, but I am no more or less protected from foreign attack than anyone else. Private Goods and services provided by the government on the other hand, are often highly contested because their provision mostly involves robbing Peter to pay Paul.
"When insurers — public or private — deny coverage, they also withhold care by extension."
Just because the someone else refuses to use their resources for the things you want does not stop you from working out a way to get what you want on your own.
"Many of our daily activities may not be the best decisions for our health — this is no reason to deny access to life-saving care."
Isn't though. I would think that the fact that I choose to smoke is a very good reason to not pay for my future lung transplant. The fact that I ride my motorcycle without a helmet is a pretty good reason not to be willing to pay for my long term care when I turn into a vegetable. Why should anyone else have to pay the extremely high cost for my decision to enjoy the nicotine hit or the wind blowing through what remains of my hair.
"Health care is a public good, but it is also a human right."
I have already covered public good and Steven did a pretty good job explaining the implications of calling it a Human right.
"It was not the patients fitted with PIP implants that were wrong in this, but the manufacturer that knowingly endangered patients to cut costs. We cannot hold the victims responsible for the manufacturer’s crime."
This article would have made more sense if you were talking about the evils of Corporate laws that allow people to make a quick buck and then leave everyone else holding the bag.
Providing assistance to those who need it is a moral imperative. Every single major religion, along with most atheistic moral creeds, promote an idea of 'aiding those in need.'
The notion that "health care is not a right" is laughable. These are teenagers who have never experienced major pain or sickness insisting that they'll never need it. Go ask mommy and daddy what it's like to get a sudden, unbearable pain in your abdomen and not be sure if you can afford to have it examined. They can explain why Freedom from Fear is a right.
It's not that the idea of mandatory insurance doesn't conflict with my libertarian ideals. It does, unequivocally. I hate it. It is a disgusting thought, that everyone should be forced to behave in a certain way by law. That said, health care is a moral imperative. There's no way around it, despite what Republicans and conservatives (who are nominally Christian, the Mother Religion of Mercy, which makes their position all the more baffling and indefensible) may tell you. Once we agree that it's disgusting to suggest that people should be allowed to die of treatable illnesses while corporate CEO's earn 5,000x the average annual pay of their workers, we have to find a way to pay for it.
Since the poor-hating Republicans refuse to raise taxes, we need to compel everyone to contribute on their own. This gets us to the insurance requirement.
Thank you, Republicans, for creating such an anti-liberty position with your greed and hypocrisy.
Providing assistance is moral according to most religion. But people have freedom to choose religion or no religion at all. So people should have the freedom to choose if they have to provide assistance and be moral.
No one should be forced to pay for another person's bill.
Good, I want to stop funding the military and all business tax breaks. Let me know when my check is in the mail.
Crucial distinction: "society" does not have a moral responsibility. Individuals do. If you see someone in need then you have a moral responsibility to help them yourself, not to hire someone to rob your neighbor and than mandate your other neighbor forcibly render his services.
Since you all yourself a libertarian, maybe you would appreciate a quote from someone who actually is one:
"It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness." –Jillette Penn
>Crucial distinction: "society" does not have a moral responsibility.
Yes it does. Society has all kinds of moral responsibilities; we call the initial acknowledgement of this the "Bill of Rights." A moral-less society is a dictatorship.
> Individuals do. If you see someone in need then you have a moral responsibility to help them yourself, not to hire someone to rob your neighbor and than mandate your other neighbor forcibly render his services.
Taxes are robbery? Seriously? You need to get out more.
I agree with you %100. And I was commenting that way on many articles. I know there is a pride that the British public had in the NHS, the glorious creation of postwar Britain that offered free, modern health care to all. Poor and rich got equal treatment; no longer would health depend on wealth. It was the only institution, it was claimed, that worked on an ethical principle.
Now I'm not sure "Health care is a public good, but it is also a human right" in fact I personally don't think so. And I'm sure you know that the NHS is having many problems but if that is the system in the UK and all people are paying for it, the thousands of women who received breast implants should not be discriminated.
http://privatehealthservice.co.uk/
More than 40,000 PIP implants were sold in the UK.
It seems like the company the manufactured the defective implants would be the one that is financially responsible. I find it strange that nobody mentions this