On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 07:40:37PM -0600, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: > just mean "Mama/Papa is 70+ and though s/he was in good health for a > person of that age before the heart attack, someone of that age can't > make any useful (financial) contribution to society, so we might as > well let them die and 'decrease the surplus population'."
What kind of reason is that? How about, "there's someone over there who needs us and who DOES have a chance of having a long, healthy life if we can save her now" > IOW, can medicine be both a 'calling' AND a _business_? If not, which > one will it actually be? The real question is, how will the resource allocation decisions be made? In a complete libertarian system, it would be whether you could pay for the medical care. In a totally socialized system, the government would decide, probably with lots of regulations and red-tape. In the current American system, which is somewhere in between those two, having a group of "uninvolved" people making the decisions seems a reasonable compromise. Although there should still be some regulations and accountability for those people (we can't have them taking bribes, for example). -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
