Oregon Health Care Plan

One of the first things I noticed about this article is that it related back to something we had discussed in class which was quality of life. And how it was nearly impossible to judge how someone's quality of life would be affected by whatever medical situation happened to arise. The idea one person is worth more than another because of some aspect of their life quality is a very sticky situation and I think this plan shows how painfully bad trying to do so can be. Once the ADA came in the whole quality of life thing had to be dropped.

One thing that really got to me though was that in the public hearings for this bill, they claimed the public was involved be the reading showed clearly that most people worked for the health industry. It's things like this that convince me that dirty hands might be inevitable because there was obviously nothing illegal about packing those hearings but man, does it ever come across as dirty handed. Besides, if you were actually out to help people, why wouldn't you want the people who are actually being affected by this bill to be there? Though it's probably because a lot of them work two jobs and dont have the opportunity to go to a hearing. They need more help than just health care.

And finally on the issue of giving all people limited health care vs. less people full health care, I really can't say for sure what I think. I personally am for full health care for all people, but that's obviously not a reality yet. But at the same time I don't think it's such a simple issue as "we don't have the money". A pretty small amount of the over all budget is usually allocated to social services and a smaller part of that is health services, when we spend a huge amount more on military and things like that. Last I checked, we had one THE best military in the world and one of the crappiest health care systems, it might not be a matter of money but more of priority. But back to the issue at hand, I'd like to think that insuring more people is better overall, though I really hate to throw those who have serious issues that would not be covered under the bus. The interesting thing is that when I try to use the "veil of ignorance" to look at the problem, it doesn't really help me much, because honestly I think it would be horrible to be both either someone without health care or someone who's healthcare doesn't cover an operation they need. I honestly don't think there is a greatest good here, someone is getting screwed either way.