When insurance bureaucrats are the ones deciding who and when one should get the care they need, it isn’t hard to understand why healthcare in the US is not functioning. I just read the story about a mother trying to convince her insurance company₁, to give her doctors the green light for a liver
transplant. She is dying, but the insurance company keeps denying the requests for a liver transplant. In essence, they deny her a future.
Four years ago this young woman was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic colon cancer that spread to her liver. The cancer was removed, but the microwave ablation surgery used to remove some of the tumors left a fist-sized hole in her liver and destroyed her bile ducts. Since then her life has been a fight to merely survive.
In the Preamble to the U.S. Declaration of Independence it is stated that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness₃.”
Clearly, life is part of the equation. This woman had insurance; paid for insurance coverage in case of a medical problem. When she needed a transplant, there was a lot of misunderstanding, and denials #Sad.
But it begs to wonder where our society is heading when bureaucrats decide who gets to live and who gets to die. That my friends is the question.
Being healthy is an integral part of life and the pursuit of happiness. Without it, we are nowhere. Working hard and reaping the benefits from your labor should entitle you to care. Good care. No less. As for the less fortunate –there always are—safety nets need to be in place because there shouldn’t be any price tag on a human life.
We have evolved from the stone age, where culling was the norm, into a quasi-civilized society where care should be the norm.
However, today, the question remains: “How do we address this need?” “Who gets to Live and who gets to die?” The debate continues₂.
₁https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-dying-mothers-plea-for-her-life/ar-AAxbUjb
₂https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/04/16/a-new-health-care-debate/
₃https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration
