The Liberal Case for Denying Health Care to People with HIV

 

Academics are making the case for denying health care to people who don’t choose to become vaccinated. (Or, making them pay their own health care bills, which, according to the “Health Care Is A Right” people is tantamount to denying people access to health care.)

Why should the vaccinated bear those financial costs? Insurers, led by government programs, should declare that medically-able, eligible people who choose not to be vaccinated are responsible for the full financial cost of COVID-related hospitalizations, effective in six weeks.That gives time for the unvaccinated to make a choice, based on their personal preferences and a truer sense of responsibility.

Philosophically, I think making everybody pay for their own health care is absolutely, no question, the best possible form of health care. It’s also the loneliest position to take, because the social consensus is that everybody is responsible for bearing the cost of everyone else’s health care (which is why health care is so gosh-darn expensive).  But what this academic (Jonathan Meer is the Mary Julia and George R. Jordan Jr. Professor of Public Policy in the economic department at Texas A&M University in College Station) is proposing is isolating a specific group of people and denying them access to health care paid for by other people on the basis that ” It’s also about not expecting others to pay for your decisions. Standing up for your beliefs means being willing to bear the consequences.”

If that’s the rationale, then shouldn’t the same rationale apply to people with HIV? HIV has been a preventable disease since at least 1984. There are regimens one can take to eliminate the risk of catching HIV. (President Trump worked to make prophylactic HIV drugs more accessible, even though he was an anti-gay monster or something.) There’s even a gay subculture that fetishizes and promotes HIV infection. And the anti-HIV regimens have far lower “breakthrough” rates than the Covid vaccines.

It seems to follow that if people can be “incentivized” to become COVID vaccinated by the threat of cutting them off from insurance-paid or government-paid health care, there’s no reasonable reason not to attach the same incentive to people who get an avoidable HIV infection.

The academic author anticipated the counter-argument of “What about other diseases that are a result of bad lifestyle choices.” His response is a weak, “Well, maybe that’s something we could have ‘a full debate’ about.” But his closing statement is a reinforcement of the philosophy of cutting off select groups for making what he would view as the “wrong” choice.

Every aspect of life comes with risks. But we don’t get to impose serious costs on others, and expecting others to pay is not only puerile but makes hard mandates more likely. Real adults take responsibility for their decisions.

Published in Healthcare
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  1. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    When was the last time the Feds required responsibility from anyone for anything when they were shoveling out money?

    • #1
  2. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    How much of obesity is controllable?  What is the volume of health care costs attributable to “controllable” obesity, and isn’t the failure to follow a healthy regimen a choice?  I’m sure that there are other examples, but the left only has a bug up its patootie over the vax.

    • #2
  3. Nohaaj Coolidge
    Nohaaj
    @Nohaaj

    Hoyacon (View Comment):
    patootie

    hahaha patootie.  HAHAHA, been a very long time since I heard this word used so succinctly. 

    • #3
  4. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Nohaaj (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):
    patootie

    hahaha patootie. HAHAHA, been a very long time since I heard this word used so succinctly.

    I am a veritable font of anachronistic expressions that few people under 65 will recognize.

    • #4
  5. Sandy Member
    Sandy
    @Sandy

    If these academic tyrants would lobby for the release of restrictions on cheap drugs like Ivermectin and  if physicians were encouraged to treat early instead of being told not to treat until the patient is seriously ill, the cost to the healthcare system of this disease would be far lower, with or without vaccines. 

    • #5
  6. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    Nohaaj (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):
    patootie

    hahaha patootie. HAHAHA, been a very long time since I heard this word used so succinctly.

    I am a veritable font of anachronistic expressions that few people over 65 will recognize.

    I’m sure you mean under 65.

    • #6
  7. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    Nohaaj (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):
    patootie

    hahaha patootie. HAHAHA, been a very long time since I heard this word used so succinctly.

    I am a veritable font of anachronistic expressions that few people over 65 will recognize.

    I’m sure you mean under 65.

    That was a trick to see who’s paying attention.

    • #7
  8. Nohaaj Coolidge
    Nohaaj
    @Nohaaj

    Hoyacon (View Comment):
    That was a trick to see who’s paying attention.

    Or, possibly it was the extra finger of bourbon. (still in tribute to Boss).

    • #8
  9. DonG (2+2=5. Say it!) Coolidge
    DonG (2+2=5. Say it!)
    @DonG

    Victor Tango Kilo: Philosophically, I think making everybody pay for their own health care is absolutely, no question, the best possible form of health care. It’s also the loneliest position to take, because the social consensus is that everybody is responsible for bearing the cost of everyone else’s health care

    Yes to paying for your own healthcare.  However, to make it more palatable we should create a hard-luck fund that provides re-insurance to the 5% of people with chronic medical conditions.    Singapore has a good program where everybody pays 4% income tax into a personal fund to pay for the health expenses.  There is a cultural expectation that family will help if needed and able.

    It is ironic that about a million Americans died of AIDS while Fauci was trying to create a vaccine and preventing the development of anti-viral treatments.  It is not often that one guy can get away with two different genocides.

    • #9
  10. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    How much of obesity is controllable? What is the volume of health care costs attributable to “controllable” obesity, and isn’t the failure to follow a healthy regimen a choice? I’m sure that there are other examples, but the left only has a bug up its patootie over the vax.

    Regular church attendance is correlated with better health. Perhaps Medicare benefits could be pro-rated according to the amount of worship service attendance recorded on one’s passport.

    • #10
  11. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    The HIV comparison would work if you posited denying health care to people who got AIDS or Covid 19 due to their past decisions. Ditto some people with heart conditions or diabetes?

    • #11
  12. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    When people on Twitter suggest that unvaccinated people be cut from insurance or denied care I share with them this poster:

    Roughly translated: “This hereditary disease cost the national community 60,000 ReichMark for life. Comrade, that’s your money too.”

    See, these defective people are a waste of your money! Compassion of the authoritarian impulses.

    • #12
  13. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Is anyone really ever responsible for someone else’s medical care that he doesn’t even know?

    Is anyone responsible for paying the medical bills of someone else he doesn’t know?

    Is anyone ever responsible for providing medical care for someone who deliberately harms harms himself?

    And on a different note, is it really necessary to mandate vaccines for a communicable illness that is only contracted through one’s choice in behaviors?  (I’m thinking of human papillomavirus here.)

    While you’re all thinking about this, I’m going to go eat my daily ration two dozen baba au rhum.

    • #13
  14. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    Nohaaj (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):
    patootie

    hahaha patootie. HAHAHA, been a very long time since I heard this word used so succinctly.

    I am a veritable font of anachronistic expressions that few people under 65 will recognize.

    Balderdash!

    • #14
  15. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    Victor Tango Kilo

    Academics are making the case for denying health care to people who don’t choose to become vaccinated. (Or, making them pay their own health care bills, which, according to the “Health Care Is A Right” people is tantamount to denying people access to health care.)

    Why should the vaccinated bear those financial costs? Insurers, led by government programs, should declare that medically-able, eligible people who choose not to be vaccinated are responsible for the full financial cost of COVID-related hospitalizations, effective in six weeks.That gives time for the unvaccinated to make a choice, based on their personal preferences and a truer sense of responsibility.

    This a complete repudiation of the ObamaCare ‘community rating’ insurance philosophy.    

    And I heartily agree.   But I want this philosophy expanded to cover all healthcare, not just Covid and vaccine choice.

    • #15
  16. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Ekosj (View Comment):

    Victor Tango Kilo:

    Academics are making the case for denying health care to people who don’t choose to become vaccinated. (Or, making them pay their own health care bills, which, according to the “Health Care Is A Right” people is tantamount to denying people access to health care.)

    Why should the vaccinated bear those financial costs? Insurers, led by government programs, should declare that medically-able, eligible people who choose not to be vaccinated are responsible for the full financial cost of COVID-related hospitalizations, effective in six weeks.That gives time for the unvaccinated to make a choice, based on their personal preferences and a truer sense of responsibility.

    This a complete repudiation of the ObamaCare ‘community rating’ insurance philosophy.

    And I heartily agree. But I want this philosophy expanded to cover all healthcare, not just Covid and vaccine choice.

    Actually, they just mandated that insurance must cover the cost of PREP ( pre exposure prophylaxis) which costs thousands of dollars a month so that homosexuals can continue to expose themselves to HIV. Medicaid covers it too.

    • #16
  17. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Actually, they just mandated that insurance must cover the cost of PREP ( pre exposure prophylaxis) which costs thousands of dollars a month so that homosexuals can continue to expose themselves to HIV. Medicaid covers it too.

    “Pre exposure prophylaxis” actually is PEP, but that would sound too happy, enthusiastic, and gay.

    • #17
  18. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    As far as my being  a non-vaxxed person, and one  who most likely cannot come down with COVID due to having had it March of 2020,  just as insurance, I now have a pantry full of one of the remedies, which were given to me free of charge.

    The main reason COVID became such an amazingly difficult to treat, expensive infection, involving a patient being hospitalized for weeks on end, is because Fauci et al deprived us of the actual remedies. So instead of being given inexpensive and effective drugs for the ailment early on, patients were not given anything until in the hospital, at which time they were given up to 18 various drugs, which included rocephin, fentanyl, and remdesivir.

    Rocephin should not be given to anyone with a respiratory infection, while remdesivir destroys a person’s kidneys. Who knows what the drugs do in combination? But I wager that many of those now suffering from “Long COVID” are actually suffering from the blast of destruction these drugs wreaked on their bodies during their hospital stays.

    The real COVID  remedies were fully available to people here in the USA. In fact Trump sent millions of doses of HCQ off to Brazil, as the government officials there assured the President they would be distributed to COVID patients, whereas in the USA, they would have probably been incinerated, per Fauci’s orders.

    Early on, doctors were discouraged from using the HCQ &its protocols and also discouraged from using  ivermectin, or zinc, or high dose C and D. The doctors were most discouraged  by Fauci’s murderous fake study of HCQ, in which the patients in the study were given 4 to 6 times or more the recommended dose. This overdosing then “proved” that HCQ can destroy a person’s heart.  Then the fake study was published in”The Lancet.” Of course it was later retracted, but by the time it was retracted, many physicians had already been hypnotized into believing that HCQ was deadly.

    Rather than worrying about the unvaxxed, let us ensure this “health official” becomes fully indicted for aggravated murder, for the full count of whatever number of people died of COVID while deprived of remedies used in at least 75 other nations on the planet.

    • #18
  19. CuriousKevmo Inactive
    CuriousKevmo
    @CuriousKevmo

    I’d think this applies not just to HIV but..

    Every other STD

    Eating cheeseburgers and buffalo wings

    Driving fast or just driving in general

    Riding motorcycles, bicycles, rock climbing, hang gliding

    Virtually every sport

    and on and on….

    This has always been my big concern with a NHS or Medicare for all – how long before things are outlawed in order to cut the cost of healthcare to the govt.

     

    • #19
  20. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    CuriousKevmo (View Comment):

    I’d think this applies not just to HIV but..

    Every other STD

    Eating cheeseburgers and buffalo wings

    Driving fast or just driving in general

    Riding motorcycles, bicycles, rock climbing, hang gliding

    Virtually every sport

    and on and on….

    This has always been my big concern with a NHS or Medicare for all – how long before things are outlawed in order to cut the cost of healthcare to the govt.

     

    You can’t have a welfare state without a police state.

    • #20
  21. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    CuriousKevmo (View Comment):

    I’d think this applies not just to HIV but..

    Every other STD

    Eating cheeseburgers and buffalo wings

    Driving fast or just driving in general

    Riding motorcycles, bicycles, rock climbing, hang gliding

    Virtually every sport

    and on and on….

    This has always been my big concern with a NHS or Medicare for all – how long before things are outlawed in order to cut the cost of healthcare to the govt.

    I don’t think this applies to professional sports, but it does go along with why I think everyone should pay 80/20 for all but catastrophic medical care.

    • #21
  22. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Flicker (View Comment):
    I don’t think this applies to professional sports, but it does go along with why I think everyone should pay 80/20 for all but catastrophic medical care.

    I agree. But then I’ve had very few collisions with the medical system.

    • #22
  23. MiMac Thatcher
    MiMac
    @MiMac

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    As far as my being a non-vaxxed person, and one who most likely cannot come down with COVID due to having had it March of 2020, just as insurance, I now have a pantry full of one of the remedies, which were given to me free of charge.

    The main reason COVID became such an amazingly difficult to treat, expensive infection, involving a patient being hospitalized for weeks on end, is because Fauci et al deprived us of the actual remedies. So instead of being given inexpensive and effective drugs for the ailment early on, patients were not given anything until in the hospital, at which time they were given up to 18 various drugs, which included rocephin, fentanyl, and remdesivir.

    Rocephin should not be given to anyone with a respiratory infection, while remdesivir destroys a person’s kidneys. Who knows what the drugs do in combination? But I wager that many of those now suffering from “Long COVID” are actually suffering from the blast of destruction these drugs wreaked on their bodies during their hospital stays.

    The real COVID remedies were fully available to people here in the USA. In fact Trump sent millions of doses of HCQ off to Brazil, as the government officials there assured the President they would be distributed to COVID patients, whereas in the USA, they would have probably been incinerated, per Fauci’s orders.

    Early on, doctors were discouraged from using the HCQ &its protocols and also discouraged from using ivermectin, or zinc, or high dose C and D. The doctors were most discouraged by Fauci’s murderous fake study of HCQ, in which the patients in the study were given 4 to 6 times or more the recommended dose. This overdosing then “proved” that HCQ can destroy a person’s heart. Then the fake study was published in”The Lancet.” Of course it was later retracted, but by the time it was retracted, many physicians had already been hypnotized into believing that HCQ was deadly.

    Rather than worrying about the unvaxxed, let us ensure this “health official” becomes fully indicted for aggravated murder, for the full count of whatever number of people died of COVID while deprived of remedies used in at least 75 other nations on the planet.

    You have a pantry full of garbage- thanks to Mercola, McCullough, and pill mill ophthalmologists. BTW McCullough is being sued by his former employer-b/c his listing them in his prior affiliations appears to have violated  his “confidential employment separation agreement” ( ie firing papers) – ie they wanted nothing to do with him when he left.

    don’t forget to take the worthless remedies while wearing your EMF blocking pendant

    • #23
  24. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    At some point the insanity of the the leftist centralized control becomes obvious, but always too late.  

    • #24
  25. dukenaltum Inactive
    dukenaltum
    @dukenaltum

    The real purpose of Socialized Medicine has always been Socialism not medicine.  Socialism is only about control and looting.  

    • #25
  26. MiMac Thatcher
    MiMac
    @MiMac

    New trial adds to the data that ivermectin doesn’t work (previously the same researchers showed HCQ is worthless)- but an inexpensive drug showed benefit in their trial:

    https://nationalpost.com/health/inexpensive-anti-depressant-could-be-best-covid-treatment-yet-canadian-led-trial-finds

    • #26
  27. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    This is probably why many Democrats not only want Medicare-for-all but also want to outlaw private health insurance.  If there is only one source of health insurance, think of the control you can have over 330 million lives.  Do what we tell you or we will deny you coverage.  Yes, you will still have to pay for it, and no, you cannot buy health insurance elsewhere.  Maybe they would also like to make it illegal to pay for medical services out of pocket.  It’s a control freak’s wet dream.

    • #27
  28. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment): Do what we tell you or we will deny you coverage.

    Not only “you” and not only “coverage”…your mom, your daughter, your neighbor, and your good friend at church will be denied service. Control will be total. 

    • #28
  29. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):

    This is probably why many Democrats not only want Medicare-for-all but also want to outlaw private health insurance. If there is only one source of health insurance, think of the control you can have over 330 million lives. Do what we tell you or we will deny you coverage. Yes, you will still have to pay for it, and no, you cannot buy health insurance elsewhere. Maybe they would also like to make it illegal to pay for medical services out of pocket. It’s a control freak’s wet dream.

    That is more or less the argument they made for seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws.

    • #29
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