OT: DE STATE OF THE STATE
Reading through Gov. Minner’s 2004 address I found the following gem:
Let me turn now to the opportunity we have to combat one of the most serious health issues facing Delawareans: cancer…We now know, thanks to research completed this year, that cancer victims without health insurance receive less than 60 percent of the health care that cancer patients with health insurance get. This means that health insurance for cancer victims can be the difference between life and death…I am asking the General Assembly to make Delaware the first state in the country to guarantee health insurance for every person in the state diagnosed with cancer. Some will say, “no other state has done it.” To them I say, it’s about time that someone did, and Delaware will lead the way.
Something’s missing here. The survival rate. Do those with health insurance survive at a significantly higher rate? Or is this just an example of what happens when someone else is paying the bill? “You want to run a super-expensive test, Doc? Well, I don’t know. Oh, insurance will cover it? Sure, then. Why not?”
Minner singles out cancer but I’d bet you could fill in the blank with just about any disease you want. We now know, thanks to research completed this year, that (heart, liver, spleen, excema, bad breath, etc.) victims without health insurance receive less than 60 percent of the health care that (heart, liver, spleen, excema, bad breath, etc.) patients with health insurance get.
So, is the state going to buy Listerine for everyone who can’t afford it? Oh wait- that’s already covered in her air pollution solution.
I don’t like slippery slope arguments but singling out a single class of diseases is the obvious first step to universal health coverage. I hope this proposal goes nowhere.