You may argue, "We should nonetheless ensure a minimum standard - on health care, food, living, and all basic human needs - to the disadvantaged."
Quite true.
But in that case you make a classical flaw in logical argument: transfer of proposition (命題轉移). We set off to discuss whether people should receive the same medical care - including all new expensive gadgets - irrespective to their financial ability; we end up supporting a minimal standard, with the inevitable implication that things could be different if you have the money.
The more of the problem is: what is the minimum standard of medical care ?
Say, for the treatment of acute heart attack, is it aspirin and beta blocker, or thrombolytic therapy, or high dose recombinant tPA, or direct angioplasty, or direct angioplasty with stent, or direct angioplasty with drug-eluting stent, or the further addition of monoclonal antibody against certain glycoprotein receptor ?
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"Of all of the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane." So was it declared by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It seems a sign pointing our way to Utopia.
And, true, any difference in health care should not be the result of age, sex, or race.
But obsessive asking for equal care of every man leads us nowhere but the Utopia of absolute zero.
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1 comment:
The minimum standard of medical care = what the tax payer/ government can afford.
It varies from very low in Africa, quite high in HK.
State-of-art standard of care = what one/'s relative/'s insurance can afford. Very high for Li Ka Shing, not so high low for xyz.
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