Why Obama's "uniquely American" plan, if any, is a violation of medical ethics

lambert's picture

Scarecrow writes at FDL:

[A]s far as I know, there don’t appear to be successful examples of the “uniquely American” hybrid model that somehow combines employment-based insurance, competition between public vs private insurance plans in an exchange, plus government-sponsored Medicare/Medicaid --- and makes it all work in a sensible fashion.

Or to put it another way, there’s a reason why this model would be “uniquely American.” It’s because no one else has made such a combination work.

That means Obama's plan -- to the extent that there is a plan that isn't off in the 11th dimension somewhere -- is an experiment. But this is people's health we're talking about -- I know, I know, if you're an insurance CEO it's extracting profit from people's flesh we're talking about, but let that pass -- and so medical ethics apply. The implication?

Obama's plan -- caveats as above -- violates medical ethics. If you experiment on somebody in the course of treating their illness, you’ve got to get their informed consent, so they know what they're getting into and can choose to accept the treatment or not. But when you're reforming health care, you're affecting everybody's course of treatment, and so informed consent rules apply.

Can anyone honestly say that the American people have given their informed consent to the kind of medicine that will be practiced on them — when single payer advocates are not only excluded, but outright censored by the White House?

Should the administration seek to impose an untested, experimental "health" care "reform" plan, one that does not have a single example of success anywhere, on the American people?

YMMV, but I don't think so. Single payer, by contrast, is NOT an experiment — It’s been shown to work. That’s why it’s the science-based solution, and one that all progressives should advocate.

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vastleft's picture

Uninformed consent is good, too, isn't it?

The MoveOn and "Stand with Dr. Dean" invitations must be drumming up a lot of consent.

ElizabethF's picture

Well.....

"when single payer advocates are not only excluded, but outright censored by the White House?

Obviously censored by everyone else too.

The crowd that assembled at a health-care rally on Capitol Hill yesterday seemed a patchwork of brightly colored union t-shirts. Organizers from Health Care for America Now, the campaign that hosted the event, estimated that thousands of people from across the country attended the rally to voice their support for universal coverage.

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