Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Gordon:
>
> >But it may be that many of the un- and semi-insured evaluate
> >the medical care establishment (MCE) differently and make an
> >intelligent guess that it isn't worth the money for them.
Whatever the limitations and errors of the 'MCE,' large parts of what it provides are rather essential for survival in an urbanized and capitalist society. It is also simply unacceptable to speculate on whether or not people would choose a given benefit within a context in which they have no chance of choosing that benefit. I broke my hip rather badly 10 years ago. Without *all* the advantages of the MCE I would simply have died. (The ball joint was smashed beyond repair or self-healing. I would, *at best*, have been permanently bed-ridden and, even with anti-biotics would almost certainly have died of pneumonia whether or not I survied what would (without very sophisticated surgery) been an almost continuous loss of blood for an indefinite period. I have very good insurance.
Urban living conditions (at least under contemporary capitalism) are generating more and more serious allergies. For infants under four many of those allergies would prove fatal without the services of the MCE. (Children under four cannot be taught to blow their nose or not swallow sputum. An allergy causing nasal congestion therefore leads to fatal self-poisoning.)
You simply cannot isolate the MCE from the total social-economic conditions of the social order that generates it. Much of that MCE might well prove unnecessary or even destructive within other social conditions, but limiting one's own access or the access of others to MCE under present conditions is at best pure foolishness.
Carrol
>
> Perhaps, but this is an empirically unproven hypothesis, and class
> tends to the most important determinant of your health.
>
> Yoshie