Healthcare for all called an ethical issue

A professional association of U.S. bioethcists has come out in favour of President Barack Obama's plans to make public health insurance available to the 50 million Americans currently uninsured.

Collegiate bioethicists waded into the health-care reform debate Tuesday, declaring that "the current state of health care is unethical" and branding as false criticisms that congressional proposals would threaten patient choice or deny older Americans medical treatment.

"We felt we needed to speak up. The tenor of the debate has become quite strained and full of misinformation," said Jeffrey Kahn, president of the new, 60-member Association of Bioethics Program Directors. Kahn also heads the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota.

"There is no morally defensible reason why some Americans get excellent medical care at costs they can afford and other Americans lose their homes or go into bankruptcy attempting to secure treatment for a seriously ill loved one," a statement from the group said.

"The current proposals being debated in Congress all go a long way toward making health care in America more just," it said. The group disputed what it called "the top three myths" about the proposals: that they would prevent individual control over health decisions, that costs would be cut by prohibiting costly treatments and that older people would be denied end-of-life care.

"This [end-of-life argument] may be the most pernicious myth of all," the statement said. Instead, a provision would pay doctors to spend time with dying patients and their families as they describe the care they want. The statement is on the group's website, www.bioethics directors.org.

The bioethcists have posted a fact sheet disputing the claims made by critics of the healthcare plan.

Comments

[terryb]

If selling my house in order to get money for medical care actually worked, I would do it. The problem is that medical care is such a risky 'buy' that I may lose my house in addition to my life. This is the issue here but of course, the crux will never, ever be stated by an industry selling false hope.

Also, the unknown element lies in the illness itself. Is it one that medical care (if it was the best possible) could fix? This is where some patient education or information could prove useful. Physiology can be really dumbed down, and people are not as stupid as doctors think they are.

Keeping the basic workings of the body out of reach to the public is a huge problem. Obama-esque medical care sounds like a plan to make sure a sick person isn't alone. That's about it.

To put a picture to this, a dying man in a desert isn't alone either. He has no reference sources and the vultures are circling above.

[Michael Kirsch, M.D.]

Of course, the U.S. health care needs healing. But, I am very skeptical that Obamacare is the cure we seek. One feature of it that is not a myth is that we cannot afford it, and I suspect that their cost estimates are low. Despite its flaws, the health care system provides quality care for most of us. A clear majority of Americans are satisfied with the health care system and a majority disapprove of Obama's plan. Too much money and too much government intervention. www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com