Letting the Market decide - No Brain Surgery for you!
The Market. In some strange Libertarian/Conservative Land of lollipops and a strong dollar, the Market stands tall as a false idol. The Market can never be wrong in this land. The Market makes life better.
The Market kicks teenagers out of an operating room because they refuse to cover the surgery.
Why was a brain surgery patient turned away?
Bartow, Florida – Seeing your child suffer is the most painful emotion a parent can experience.
Sheila Jackson says she would gladly trade places with her daughter, Caitlin, who was recently diagnosed with a rare brain disorder called Quiari Malformation.
“As a parent, you wish first and foremost it was you instead, you know,” Jackson says.
The destructive condition will rob her 19-year-old daughter of motor skills, memory and possibly one day, her life. For now, Caitlin has excruciating headaches and dangerous fainting spells. Her life as she knows it has come to a standstill.
“I constantly have to have somebody around me. I can’t even stay at home for five minutes,” Caitlin says.
With all the pain, there is still a peaceful expression on the face of Caitlin’s mother. She says her faith is the only thing getting her through what can only be described as a nightmare.
Caitlin needs immediate surgery for her condition, and she was hours away from getting it.
The problem? Her insurance company, Aetna. They approved the operation 15 minutes too late. Caitlin lost the operating room to another patient and had to be rescheduled.
Then, the company came back with an even bigger shocker. They told her they would not cover her brain surgery at all, that her benefits ran out.
The family would now have to foot the bill at a staggering $113,000. Tampa General Hospital was requiring $55,000 down, and the rest after the operation.
John McCain’s plan to fix things like this?
An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people’s needs, lower prices, and portability.
Translation: Use the word “reform” a lot, then let The Market decide. Just as it is now.
Health Care is a human right. But luckily for a “reformer” like McCain, The Market doesn’t care one bit about humanity.
–WKW
July 16th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
>> The Market. In some strange Libertarian/Conservative Land of lollipops and a strong dollar, the Market stands tall as a false idol. The Market can never be wrong in this land. The Market makes life better.
Oh crap. I could rant on this. Oh my goodness how I could rant.
But let me just add this one little snip instead.
The largest flaw in Libertarian ideology in regards to the market, is the incorrect and fundamentally flawed assumption that market forces work in the same way as natural forces.
Market forces are by definition, however, unnatural.
“Let the market decide”.
How about instead: Government interjects itself as little as possible, but when situations arise whereas the market is fucking us and others over, we step in and correct it ourselves?
But as you pointed out Bill, libertarians are similar to religious zealots, and their God, The Market, should not be blasphemed by such things as insisting on a humane system of health care and health insurance.
Goodness knows, we wouldn’t want to muddy up the purity of a 19th century market philosophy for the sake of practical common sense.