Re: Health Care is a right Originally Posted by CRNI-ICU20 
DarrenWright,
I don't know what your age is, but you might want to rethink your position on people who were denied THEIR RIGHTS to health care back in the late 80's and early 90's because they developed/acquired HIV-AIDS.....not all of them were gay men...some were the unfortunate folks who received a tainted blood transfusion...some were children who had hemophelia, and could no longer afford Factor 8 for maintaining their life......and their INSURANCE COMPANY DROPPED THEM.... they were denied health care because they no longer had insurance to cover the costs of medical treatment...
In fact, to this day, every insurance company in this nation has a DENIAL department.....people who actually spend their whole day lookin for reasons to DENY a policy holder healthcare coverage....they research all kinds of old records on each and every one of us...they have amazing access to personal information....I think you would be shocked to know what they know about you....right down to how many traffic tickets you have ever had...( I know this to be true, I have a close friend who actually worked for a time in this kind of job....she could tell you what color your pubic hair was!!)
yes...these uninsured could go to XYZ hospital in the middle of the night to some emergency room and gain "access" to medical care....but then those same people are being chastised by even some of us here for using up limited resources for going to the ER 'instead of their doctor'....well if they can't see a doctor because they are refused for not having health care coverage, how are they supposed to get help for their medical needs? There aren't medical clinics in every village...some places are too remote...or medical clinics only treat certain types of illnesses... One thing that is certain, these human beings are just as deserving of health care as a basic human right as you or I....
Why you seen to find this disdainful is a puzzle to me....would you elaborate?
1. Those folks were not denied any rights by any legislative body. And currently, there is more money allocated per disease capita on HIV/AIDS than there are for other more common diseases that take far more lives. Those folks may have been denied financial coverage, but they were never denied any rights, and some have gotten the point I was making; if you are going to blur the definition of "rights" with comparisons like this, then you are opening a huge can of problems where people are going to be demanding money based on this distorted view of "rights."
2. Of course insurance companies have "denial departments." Get this...so does Medicare and Medicaid...the gov't provided system. So does the Canadian payers system. Going single-payer/socialist does not suddenly make denial of claims obsolete. You may actually find denial of claims to increase.
3. Your final comments on the use of emergency dept's for primary access; in a "single-payer"/socialized system like Canada, they are not experiencing some phenomena where people are using primary care physicians instead of ED's because it's a single-payer system. Instead, their ED's are even more overwhelmed than ours because nearly 17% of the population does not have a PCP, and even some that do have a PCP can't get an appointment.
Concluding, your comments really have nothing to do with a legislative right to health care, because what you are doing is defining a right to something as the same as being able to get it for free...and that is not defined as a right in our Constitution.
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