Do you want public health? Then pay the no-vax for treatment too
Whenever a category identified as responsible for the infection presents itself, the same proposal always starts from some authoritative and public voice: if they get sick, they should be treated at their own expense. The ultimate target is, needless to say, the unvaccinated. And it is Ilaria Capua , virologist among the most popular in the media, who asks, from the columns of the Corriere della Sera , that those who choose not to get vaccinated contribute to the cost of her hospitalization. A "small deductible" (as he defines it) of 1,000 or 2,000 euros per day which, according to Capua, is also a generous price, considering that it does not include medical and nursing expenses, but only covers non-health costs (bed, linen , canteen, cleaning, utilities, etc …).
This topic does not sound new at all. When there were still no vaccines, the preferred targets were deniers and no-masks . The same thing was also proposed to them: pay the costs of hospitalization. This was said by the Swiss economist Willy Oggier , who had ended up in the newspapers in Italy (passed off in the headlines as "proposed by Switzerland", while it was his personal joke ), but many before him, especially medical personnel, had vent on social networks or in anonymous interviews saying roughly the same thing: that deniers come to visit the intensive care units (legitimate topic) and pay for their hospitalization (a little more problematic topic).
In the face of these positions, the typical response of those who are indignant is: remember that they are doctors and have taken the Hippocratic oath, so it is their moral duty to also treat those who deny the existence of Covid and those who choose to do not get vaccinated.
But we want to try to make a different cultural experiment: let's satisfy them. Those who take a greater risk, not wearing a mask and not taking any precautions against infection, not vaccinating and gathering, pay for their treatment, directly from their own pocket or through health insurance. That would be a lot less weight for our pockets, wouldn't it? Because those who maintain virtuous behavior do not have to pay taxes for those who, by taking on greater risks, pay for any treatment out of their own pockets. So it can go.
But, there is a but. No-mask and no-vax aren't the only categories that are at greater risk. One of the main causes of hospitalization, regardless of Covid , is smoking (again to stay on the subject of lungs and respiratory diseases). Smoking is a voluntary action by conscious adults. So, for the sake of consistency if nothing else, we charge hospital fees for smokers if they have health problems related to their addiction. And we deduct those costs from health taxes paid by non-smokers.
It is not enough. Another very common cause of death, regardless of the pandemic, is related to alcohol. Therefore, even those who, due to their alcoholic consumption, end up in hospital, should pay their hospitalization costs. And even those should be discounted from the taxes paid by those who are teetotal.
This is for those who drink. But who does he eat for? Cholesterol, as well as other pathologies linked to too much caloric nutrition, is one of the main causes of hospitalization in every advanced society, including the Italian one. Even those with overweight problems should consistently pay hospital costs in the event of hospitalization. On the other hand, what we eat depends only on us, not on environmental circumstances. So … another nice discount on taxes for those who, on the other hand, follow a very healthy diet. May other technical-scientific committees determine what is healthy to eat, such as the former Minister Sirchia who, in the early 2000s, also wanted to regulate the portions of food in restaurants.
We have therefore established that those who are hospitalized, if they smoke, drink or eat too much, must pay the expenses themselves and no longer be the responsibility of the taxpayer. Are there any categories missing? Of course: those who get injured by doing sports, for example. Or those who get injured in road accidents of which they are the recognized culprits. And there are a thousand other ways that a person can inflict himself or risk inflicting damage on himself which then must be treated in the hospital. Is it right for others, innocent, taxpayers, to pay for the consequences of their behavior?
And here we discovered the obvious: that there is no such thing as a free meal. Only on these occasions, in fact, do we discover that health care has a cost. All our life we think it is free, but it is not. We discover that those who have a lifestyle that we consider deplorable, weighs on the "community" and must be treated at the expense of those who, perhaps, lead a life as a health- conscious ascetic and, in time of Covid , respect all the indications of the State to avoid the contagion. If we want to maintain public health, that is, paid by the taxpayers, we must also accept to pay the price.
There are only two ways out. The first is the establishment of a true health regime. Not like Orwell, but worse, like in the dystopia described by the film The Island : all monitored from birth to grave, from sunrise to sunset, only to discover that their life was only for … we do not spoilers , but they don't make a good ending . The second is: the privatization of health care. Or at least the acceptance of a freer competition between public and private, where each chooses his own insurance plan and the State, at most, intervenes in a subsidiary way to assist those who cannot do it. Also in this case, there would be limits to personal freedom, but spontaneous: an insurance could refuse to cover a smoker or a no-vax (risks too high), but perhaps it could offer a higher premium. In any case, it would be a more flexible system, with a much wider margin of negotiation and without all these collective guilt hunts.
But woe to talk about it! With private healthcare, as in the US, "people are left to die on the street". And then we pay the hospitalization costs to the no-masks and the no-vaxes , without too many fuss.
The post Do you want public health? Then pay the treatment even to the no-vax appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/volete-la-sanita-pubblica-allora-pagate-le-cure-anche-ai-no-vax/ on Fri, 23 Jul 2021 03:49:00 +0000.