Comments are inserted below: Chris Farley
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stephen Hay Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 3:31 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] A Pill, a Scalpel, a Database (SNIP) And people who make policy tend not to be subject to that policy - at least, where I live that's the case... Likewise, the people who demand the information be made public are usually in a position, I say usually, that doesn't require that their own records are open to public display... or they're currently in a situation in which it doesn't matter. Funny how the onset of disease affects people's perspective on things like this... CBF: Ultimately, no one is exempt. If you abuse the power the people give you, you won't be in a position to make policy very long. (SNIP) There is also the possibility to profile and apply user-pays to those who have a non-contagious disease which treatment costs a lot. So suddenly if you're sick, you're financially responsible for that too. So much for *public* health. CBF: I don't see an issue with this. Why shouldn't sick people pay for care? When I was a child, I hardly ever went to the doctor. My mother didn't want to pay for it. I only went when I was very ill. That is the idea of co-pays today, just a little hurtle to make sure you really are sick - though that doesn't seem to be working very well. But there's insurance. For a start, the life insurance companies would be VERY interested because they'd have a way of checking the truth or not of insurance applications. In fact, you wouldn't even need to fill in the application. They could just send you a bill based on your life expectancy. CBF: This is a perfect way to handle life insurance. The idea of life insurance is to help the survivors should you be taken before you have a chance to plan for it. Those who are going to die early, should live life in that manner and plan appropriately - and pay more for life insurance. If my life expectancy is 80, I don't want to pay more because someone with a shorter life expectancy wanted to lie to the insurer so they could live high off the hog. Employers would be interested because they'd be able to pick and choose employees based on health factors as well as competence. Meaning, if you had the choice between two candidates and one suffered from a condition that might affect their work, which would you choose? Is that legal? Maybe not now, but just wait until the next downturn... CBF: This should definitely be legal. Why should the employer be saddled with the cost of your lowered productivity due to illness? So the sick become the unemployed, who can't afford the insurance for the treatment they need. No problem, you say. That's what happens now... And it goes on. You'll be able to check whether or not people are carrying the gene that makes them pre-disposed to a certain disease. You could even sterilise them so that they don't propagate the gene, in the interest of the common good, of course. CBF: The points you made in the previous paragraphs closely align with the eugenics debates of the 1920s. The same debates that Hitler used to justify his final solution. While history does tend to repeat itself, I think we can all clearly see that sterilization and selective abortion is wrong - and we have Hitler as a prime example of just how wrong it is.. Plus, the Republicans would never let this happen, so most of that part of your argument is too fantastic. The typhoid/AIDS argument is valid as an example of the contagious disease-type policy. It's a valid public health argument. For *after* the disease makes itself known... CBF: Why would we wait until after an epidemic starts? Isn't that the ultimate failure of the government's response to AIDS - they waited to act. "After" is too late. The disease made itself known by either killing someone or making them very ill. The diabetes argument is largely a financial one, I think billions was mentioned. And no, I don't live in Brooklyn. But we do have a huge diabetes problem... CBF: You state this as if the financial considerations just don't matter. But, they certainly matter. Unless you are an economist and fully understand the full implications, you probably shouldn't brush the costs off so quickly. I think one of the issues in all this is the potential for the misuse of this information in making *predictions*. If you moved to a town in which 40% of the population didn't live to 60, would you feel obliged to die? CBF: I don't really understand this point. Can you clarify it's meaning for me a little? ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
