Health Care Rationing Debate?

Question

Im a college student who has been assigned to debate the cons of the topic Healthcare rationing. I have never debated before and I am a little nervous. One specific point that I will be debating is that healthcare rationing favors those who can afford healthcare, not the poor. What else could I say regarding this specific point? Because i know I cannot just say that it favors those who can afford it and be done? Can someone help? How would you debate this specific point, what would you say to give me any idea. Oh, and I want to include ration healthcare for the elderly, how should I go about that? Any help would be great! Thank you!

Answer 1

Of course it favors those who have wealth and power. However, your topic is vague. In instances such as with the elderly, it is not really a question of rationing. We have a system that rewards doctors and hospitals for performing procedures. In the case of someone who is terminally ill and has no chance of recovery, it is debatable if providing all possible healthcare benefits like surgeries the patient will never recover from serves anyone other than those who are charging. There are many instances when procedures are performed on people who have severe dementia with no quality of life. Should they be subjected to procedures to extend life when there is no hope of improvement? Right now, if the patient's family insists, they are.



The cons of rationing relate to who has the decision making power and what is the motivation for rationing. Is it the patient, the family, the insurance company or state or federal officials or the doctor. Is it because of scarcity of resources or is it about inability to pay.



An interesting case is the Schiavo case. Brain dead patient with no hope of recovery, kept alive for years and paid for by Medicaid. All because her mother could not accept the reality that she was never coming back.



And the Charlie Guard case in England. The child would never recover, will only continue to get worse. Who does it benefit to continue to subject him to treatments? Again, all because of parents who cannot accept the inevitable. These are cases where palliative care is appropriate, but extensive procedures performed with no hope of good results serves no one.



You have to ask yourself, in a nation where people go without healthcare because of lack of money, does it make sense to pour millions of health care dollars into these cases?



The con is simple, who gets to say yes.

Answer 2

see



Rationing of health care services according to an individual’s ability to pay — or, as the case may be, the inability to do so — is becoming more prevalent in the United States, both in the public and private insurance spheres. Commercial payers, for example, increasingly require doctors to follow a complex and time-consuming authorization process. Recent surveys show that 75 percent of doctors complain about this often unnecessary step.



Insurance companies know that, given all the time the process consumes, some physicians will choose the path of least resistance and just skip ordering a test or referral they might otherwise have pursued.

...



In some of these poorer countries, individuals face limited access to needed services unless they have the resources to pay high fees at “private clinics” owned by individual doctors. And the inevitable delays in accessing necessary care for urgent and emergent problems lead to higher mortality and complication rates.

...

Medicaid, a publicly funded program that provides insurance coverage to low-income individuals, is another example. In states where reimbursements are significantly lower than those from other payers, many doctors refuse to participate. They know that caring for these patients will simply cost them more than they will receive in reimbursement from the government. As such, having coverage under Medicaid does not in itself guarantee access to care. And as a result, when the supply of willing providers is substantially lower than the number needed to treat the population enrolled, the total amount of care delivered may decrease, but once again, the reduction happens at the expense of the health and well-being of the individuals served. The process is haphazard. It’s neither a rational nor satisfactory way to lower the cost of entitlements.



For people over 65, coverage is also provided by the government via Medicare, although at the federal, not the state, level. Over the past few years, payments to doctors and hospitals have been flat or even declining. As a result, we run the risk that seniors covered through this important and successful program could face difficulties similar to those in Medicaid in gaining access to care in the future.



http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2017/03/health-care-rationing-hope.html



Rationing of healthcare services according to an individual’s ability to pay—or, as the case may be, the inability to do so—is becoming more prevalent in the United States, both in the public and private insurance spheres. Commercial payers, for example, are increasingly requiring doctors to follow a complex and time-consuming authorization process. Recent surveys show that 75% of doctors complain about this often unnecessary step.



Insurance companies know that given all the time the process consumes, some physicians will choose the path of least resistance and just skip ordering a test or referral they might otherwise have pursued.



https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2017/02/02/why-healthcare-rationing-is-a-growing-reality-for-americans/#6e73ab52dbad



and see others



https://www.google.com/search?ei=1zL6WYqzCofYjwOxur6QAQ&q=healthcare+rationing+favors+those+who+can+afford+healthcare%2C+not+the+poor.++&oq=healthcare+rationing+favors+those+who+can+afford+healthcare%2C+not+the+poor.++&gs_l=psy-ab.12...3839.3839.0.5907.1.1.0.0.0.0.153.153.0j1.1.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.S7rLWsKqSXc



Points like unnecessary suffering, catching things early so people do not become disable, drug prices, ...

Answer 3

It depends on how and what would be rationed. The government could say no health care for anyone with illness related to smoking, alcohol or illegal drugs. People of all economic spectrums are guilty of these vices. The government could say organ transplants would not be paid for because the procedures and the treatments are so costly. Life sustaining treatments could be withheld from the elderly over age 80 because they are going to die anyway. In these cases all aspects of health care would be under government control. We don't have that in the US. Rich people could not buy the health care they need because of government "rationing."

Answer 4

I would need a littel more information. Health care is already rationed, but it is rationed based upon market forces. So it sounds like you are talking about the problem with the gov't rationing health care. This really goes into the type of system set up by the gov't. Only certain types of single-payer health care plans actually would need to ration health care beyond market forces.



As far as the problem with rationing health care beyond market forces is that you will always have less health care than the market would naturally provide. It would be rather easy to translate this to more suffering and death.

Answer 5

There should be Medicare for all.