posted on October 26, 2003 09:17:12 AM new
From the Ogden UT Standard-Examiner today:
Wasatch Rambler: Could unintentional blow make better care for us all?
Sun, Oct 26, 2003
By CHARLES TRENTELMAN
Wasatch Rambler
Old joke: A man asks a woman if she will spend the night with him for $1 million. The woman says, "Sure. For $1 million, once won"t hurt."
Then the man changes the offer to $20.
"What kind of woman do you take me for?" she says, offended.
"We"ve already established that," he answers. "Now we"re negotiating price."
In a world where a lot of things seem to be up for negotiation, I was glad to see Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his state"s Legislature strike a blow for government-mandated universal health coverage the other day.
That may not have been their intention, but if a state government can cite the sanctity of life to say one person has a right to health care, and order it, it stands to reason that others ought to get it, too. The issue is settled; only the method remains to be negotiated.
You certainly saw the stories. The Florida Legislature determined that a woman listed as being in a vegetative state needed medical care, passed a bill ordering it, and the governor signed it.
Don"t get me wrong. It is very scary that government lawmakers are meddling with medical cases, especially if it might be against patients" wishes. If I"m dying, I don"t want Gov. Mike Leavitt deciding things.
The justification for the meddling -- that the woman is a living person and so has a right to medical care -- is what"s important here. The new law is almost certainly unconstitutional, but that justification is intriguing and should stand.
That justification means the facts of this case, involving a furious court battle by people allegedly protecting the woman"s interests, really don"t matter. She"s a $1 million case, but the $20 case should have the same right.
We"ve been edging around this situation here in Utah with the Parker Jensen case, the boy who doctors say needs chemotherapy to treat cancer but whose parents refuse to approve it.
Utah, stepping in as the ultimate protector of the child"s welfare, also raises the issue of the state"s role in deciding who has the final say-so in health care. Is it really different if a parent denies a child health care or if an insurance company denies an adult health care?
All the preaching about the sanctity of life in the Florida case must be highly amusing to Utahns on Medicaid. They found out last December how much sanctity their lives have: not much.
The Utah Legislature was short on funds, so it cut the state"s Medicaid budget. Sick people living on $700 a month were told to pay back a third of that to qualify for their pills.
I got phone calls from people sure they were going to die. Most were crying. One woman said the payment, plus her rent, would leave her with $70 a month for everything else.
Images of dying old people forced the Legislature to find the money. The whole thing was a cruel exercise in the way this nation manages its cash-and-carry medical rationing system.
So this Florida deal is a good thing. Florida defied the courts, some of the family and allegedly even the verbal wishes of the patient. It cut the Gordian knot, saying, "Life is sacred; give her medical care and don"t bother us with details."
Once that right is established, the idea that you only get medical care if you can pay, whether it be $20 or $1 million, is swept away.
And good riddance. All that"s left now is negotiating how we"re going to do it.
Wasatch Rambler is the opinion of Charles Trentelman. You can phone him at 625-4232 or e-mail him at [email protected].
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"Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humour, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking, brings us close to the actually existing world and its wholeness." --Gary Snyder
