Random (and often acerbic) musings about whatever I deem worthy of comment.
Question about health care: Would government health care (eg. Canada’s) work better (ie. be less expensive) if people were forced to pay for part of the cost of their treatment if the person’s behaviour was directly responsible for their illness? Is there any place in the world where this is done?
Ian Gibson is a Librarian at the QEII Library at Memorial University of Newfoundland. The views contained on this blog are entirely those of the author and may not reflect institutional opinion/policy @ MUN.
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Instead of denying people care because of someone else’s pre-conceived judgements about how people live their lives (which may or may not consider social and health inequities that contribute to poor health, or based on evidence for that matter), how about considering a re-orientation of health care away from the focus on acute care, to preventive/community-based care, so that instead of making them sick, people’s “lifestyles” incorporate healthy habits that drastically reduce systemic costs over the long term?
To answer your other question, I think the UK may have been considering several taxes for people with “unhealthy lifestyles”.
The costs of health care will never go down so long as the acute care model of health care is in place – equipment, pharmaceuticals, physician fees, expensive procedures – which only addresses problems once they present themselves will always be far more expensive than spending money to prevent them in the first place. And charging people extra for their “lifestyle” illnesses is not the answer. It only serves to further marginalize, and exacerbate negative determinants of health for, those getting sick in the first place.
Take a look at the Ottawa, Jakarta and Bangkok Charters to get a feel for what I mean.