Limiting the healthcare choices of women who might become pregnant
No real entry for today, but I’ve been commenting over on Feministe again. It’s fascinating how these women can effortlessly double-clutch between Libertarianism and Socialism, depending on which philosophy suits for the moment.
Anyway here is what’s up:
So I’m over there saying that if you want healthcare choices, and you support medical privacy, you really ought to drop your support for socialized medicine. It seems logical that the people who hold abortion as being (among other things) a privacy issue would not want to create a bureaucratic system that manages people’s health records and issues edicts that might limit the types of treatments that your doctor may be able to provide to you.
But it seems a tough sell. Part of my comment:
Regardless and back on topic, can you see how perhaps a Canadian style (universal, single-payer, socialized, take your pick) healthcare or a HMO plan might limit one?s choices compared to perhaps something like Health Savings Account (HSA) with a medical high deductible health insurance plan?
Increased government regulation is gonna ooze it’s creeping crud between a doctor and his practice and take away any discretion of the course of treatment, no getting around it. That’s just what bureaucrats do.
The other benefit is this. Medical records used to be between a doctor and the patient. Nowadays it?s between a doctor, the patient, and the HMO (still understandable, they have to pay out the expenses, of course they’ll want to see the records). Now the trend is a computerized standard defined by the government. How is that going to enhance your privacy? (You all are still big on medical privacy, right? I mean that was a cornerstone in Roe, right?)
If you honestly think that politically well-connected congress-critters and their maggot minions won?t improperly traipse through other people?s medical record when it suites their purposes, you ought to take a look at the aids of Charles Schumer did to get ahold of Michal Steele’s credit report (I have to say though, Chucky did the right thing and promptly fired their asses, but he goes on and picked up their lawyer bills) http://tinyurl.com/qj38e (WaPo)
Yup, I’m a big advocate of Health Savings Accounts (that are nothing like the use-it-or-lose-it Flexible Spending Accounts you may be used to):
I did mention the “medical high deductible health insurance plan” right? That’s the group insurance that kicks in when your expenses go over the “high deductible”. Except odds are, most people will never hit that ceiling. That’s why the rates are cheap, but if you ever have a medical catastrophe , your risks are spread out over others. It’s a safety net that does not get used as a hammock.
Anyway, go over and check it out.
