Richard Fernandez ruminates on the unfairness of first-world medicine:
The UK’s top public doctor says the failure to find a cure for Ebola represents underscores “the moral bankruptcy of capitalism”. Does that mean we can expect an Ebola vaccine from a socialist country any day now?
. . .
Whenever you discover a new cure, you have a problem. When most diseases were incurable, health care was cheap because you hired a grave digger and that was it. It’s when a cure is discovered that one can start ranting about the unfairness of it all. Ebola doesn’t illustrate the moral failure of capitalism; if anything it underscores the creative dilemma of private unreasonableness.
5 comments:
A public doctor is like a public tax collector.
If I can't have it, you can't have it either.
It's of a piece with a movement to force Israel to give its Iron Dome to the Gaza Strip or shut theirs down.
It's of a piece with "Gimme, gimme, gimme."
It's of a piece with "I am, therefore I deserve." Or "I deserve, therefore I am."
It's from the creation of dependency.
Eric Hines
It is reasoning with feelings.
I put the break-even point for doctors saving you more than killing you at 1942. So we really haven't been at this modern medicine thing all that long.
I always hear Goofy from the Disney cartoons singing, "Oh the world owes me a living...." when I read things such as this.
*sigh*
I just wish I could find the vid clip for it.
This is a peeve of mine as well. People complain about the costs of modern drugs, and how pharmaceutical companies gouge us, and how other countries sell the same drugs for less.
And they really don't like it when I point out that nearly every drug (both lifesaving and quality of life) comes from the US. Nearly every one. Why? Because here, companies are rewarded for innovation. In Europe? Their patents are basically stolen from them, so true research is all government funded or non-existent.
Why do drugs cost so much in the States? Because you're paying for innovation.
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