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Reasons Why Healthcare Should Not Be A Business

Healthcare seems to be all over the news, partly due to privatisation and cutbacks here in the UK, and also "Obamacare" in the US. It's got me thinking. There's some very serious ethical consequences to trying to turn a profit from the healthcare industry.

1) Lets take a hypothetical, the mythical cure for cancer, to look at this. Lets take an extreme example and say you managed to find a cure for cancer costing only £1,000 in research, and it was entirely viable, and each patient cost only £1 to be cured. Excellent! Except, remember this is a business. You've got a lot of people who are rich and desperate for a cure, and others with excellent insurance... How much is this cure worth to them? How much is their life worth? £10,000? £50,000? £250,000? £1,000,000? More? Since you own the patent, people can't compete with you, you've got a technological monopoly and can charge whatever they can pay. You could even charge on a case by case basis, with full prices for those who can afford it, and taking everything the poor patient owns if they can't. How many people would be left to die because they simply have no money, because if you sold this cure at cost you wouldn't be making vast sums in profit?

2) Now lets pretend you're a car salesman. You have a customer coming in who needs a car, you know that a used car costing just £1,000 would be perfect for them. But you also know you make far more money by trying to sell them a brand new car with all the extras for £20,000. Of course you go for the up sale, that's where your money is made. What happens if instead of something tangible like a car, it was in fact a medical procedure. Lets say you patient has an illness which can be treated with either a £100 course of medication, or invasive surgery costing them £100,000, which would leave them scarred for life. Maybe you know they've got excellent insurance which would pay whatever you charge them. Treating them for £100 of course would make them happy, and not scar them, but it's hardly worth doing is it? Surely you'll coerce them into taking the expensive surgery because you'll make a lot of money, they'll still get better, and they'll only be left with a scar that lasts the rest of their life. But hey, you can get that new car you've been wanting. Yay!

3) Now, you instead run a health insurance company. Obviously, the insurance company wins if the policy holder is healthy and well and never needs treatment, and really sick people are a liability. Even though people who get sick, and trust in their insurance, need your money to even live that will drastically cut into your profit. Ideally, they'd pay for their own treatment rather than you pick up the bill. So, this is where you're sneaky. You give people medical examinations to make sure they're healthy, if they're high risk then you refuse to insure them (or charge them exorbitant sums for insurance) to make sure you're not losing money. Next you put in disclaimers, as many as possible, to ensure that any minor slip up on the policy holders part voids their insurance. It could be little things, like disqualifying them if whatever illness they have has been suffered by a relative, and this hasn't been declared to you before the policy. "Oh? Their great great Granddad had a heart attack, now they've had one? We didn't know this, you needed a special policy to cover that, the treatment is your responsibility." You're also going to have to make sure you cut lose those people who could get sick in the future. Lets say you've got a customer who was entirely healthy and been your customer for years. Recently they developed cancer and thanks to your policy they've survived. Now you're worried that it would come back... What do you do? Cancel the policy? Charge them more? You've got to do something, this is your bottom line you've got to think about. Now put the shoe on the other foot. You thought you were entirely covered, except you got ill and this has pushed your premium up and now you can't afford it. It's not like recklessly crashing your car, you had no control over it but you're now a liability not only to that insurance company but to all of them. What do you do?

4) Now lets say you run a clinic which is doing a trial of a new cure for a deadly fatal disease. There is however, only one place left. One is a poor widowed man with a several young children who depend on him, and the other is a single childless multimillionaire who has offered not only to build a hospital in your name, but to invest heavily in your clinic and make you very rich, only if you save his life instead. Looks like some children are going to be orphaned, right?

5) An insecure, impressionable, yet rich, young woman comes into your practice looking for advice on dieting, exercise and so on to help her feel better about her body. Do you simply give her advice and places to go, and maybe get a little kick back from your friend who runs a gym, or do you play on her insecurities to try and get her to opt for an expensive cosmetic surgical procedure despite it not being best for her? What if, instead of cosmetic surgery she was pregnant and was wondering whether an abortion would be the best option. Telling her to keep it earns you nothing, but an abortion procedure is another thing you can bill her for, you now have a financial incentive to helping her choose one decision over the other, even if it's not the best thing for her.

I'm all in favour of business, but profiteering from life and death decisions has severe ramifications far more serious than buying an unnecessarily expensive car. Just some food for thought.

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This happened to a good friend:

English Plus (English +), Gunsan, South Korea

Here is a list of things which happened in the two months I worked for English+ 1. I was not paid for the first week I worked for the school because this was a “training week”. I received absolutely no training. I received a list of classes but no information about the class size, the ages of the students or their levels of English, or teaching materials. 2. I arrived at the school with another teacher. He was told to teach from textbooks. When we arrived, 5 of six classes had textbooks. By the time we left, all but one class had finished their textbook. When a class finished their book, my colleague was told by the director of studies that she would order new ones. When it became clear that this wasn’t happening, he was given directions to a bookshop and instructed to go and buy more himself. At this point he had been a teacher (trained in teaching English to adults) for 6 weeks, and was not in a position to be writing a syllabus. 3. After our “training week” I was given newspapers to teach from. I was told that I would receive new newspapers once a week, and proceeded to use the newspapers at a rate which would mean they would be finished after a week. A few days later I was told that I would receive new newspapers once a month. A month later when I asked when I would get new newspapers, I was told they would get there in a few days. From that point on whenever I asked I was told they would get there “tomorrow”. I eventually received newspapers 6 weeks after the first ones had arrived. 4. About a month in to being at the school, I was abducted by a stranger and physically and sexually assaulted, and left an hour outside Gunsan. After walking back to the city in the middle of the night, and managing to contact the police and sitting in a police station where nobody spoke any English, bleeding, for around an hour, my director of studies (Jennifer Hwang) turned up. The first thing she said when she saw me was “Teachers should not cause things like this. It brings shame on the school.”. 5. A few days after being abducted and attacked the director of studies called me in for a meeting where it was explained to me at length that my being attacked was damaging to the reputation of the school and that dealing with the police was an inconvenience to her as she was busy running her other business. 6. Our director of studies told me that there had been complaints about my teaching. She then told me that she was too busy to answer any questions I had, and I should e-mail the previous teachers instead.

Please re-blog this as much as you can, this should not happen to anyone else.

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Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (Star Trek 2009)

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“Avengers Assemble!” by Melissa Smith

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[via]

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We’re not a team, we’re a time bomb

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I love everything about this.

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Computer Games vs. Books

Something which has bothered me is how any book by default is assumed to be good. A source of knowledge and insight, and generally makes any kid better by getting them to read. Yet computer games are assumed to be by default bad, leading to obesity, laziness, and violence, despite what the game is actually like.

Even the most controversial games, such as Grand Theft Auto, have been proved not to make people more violent. Of course, there's some cases where games such as that have been blamed on the motivation for a crime. However, Catcher in the Rye was apparently the cause of John Lennon's assassination. You can't shield people away from violence in the media, you can't even watch the news or read a paper without seeing graphic stories about war and violent crime.

On the other hand, many games are an excellent way of improving different aspects of your mind. Even a shooter like Call of Duty improves your reactions and dexterity, while making you think tactically. Role playing games, especially those with engines based upon D&D, like World of Warcraft required advanced mathematical calculations for players to work out what gear and skills to use to create the best outcomes. Puzzle games like Tetris increases spacial awareness. Plenty of games have really deep worlds filled with extra material to read, games such as Skyrim. Many of the challenges to be found in many games are along similar lines to the questions in IQ tests, for obvious reasons.

Just like there's great intellectual value to be gained from reading books, I do believe there's similar gains to be made from computer games, if only people were to assess the medium objectively.

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Really looks amazing! It's stunning what they managed to do.

Easter Island heads have bodies… arms, clothes (well… loincloths), and carvings. Also, they’re HUGE. Incredible!

It could totally be a Doctor Who plot… :O