A Moderate View of Health Care

As a Canadian, I greatly appreciate that I don't have to worry about going bankrupt paying for medical bills. I think it is in everyone's best interest to have a system in which there is a public source of funds for medical treatment, as it is in everyone's best interest that there be publicly funded education. Everyone gains an advantage from living amongst literate people, and everyone should enjoy the advantage of living amongst healthy people.

That being said, a single payer health care system that does not allow individuals to pay for quicker access is not the best way to tackle the issue. While there are reasonable criticisms of a two tier system, I believe that it is very possible to come up with a way of allowing private health care and taxing it that funnels extra money into the public system, making those who rely on it better off than they would if everybody waited in the same line in the public system rather than draining the public system of the best equipment and doctors.

The threat to the public system is not, however, the only criticism of a two tier system in Canada. People who are opposed to it, are also adverse to the idea of a rich person being able to get better or faster care than a poorer person, even if you could work out a way to improve the care the poorer person would eventually get. It is not unreasonable to ask, "why does a person with more money deserve better or faster care?" A wealthier person is not more deserving of care than a poor person, so I can understand why they would find this repugnant. Nonetheless, I see it a different way.

My question is, why should the public be paying for the health care of Irving family? They're billionaires, but if they get treated in Canada, some of the tax dollars of a person barely above the poverty line goes to pay for that. How is that fair? Why should we have to pay for the health care of those who are perfectly capable of paying for it on their own, especially if we could tax their treatment in a way that adds extra revenue to the treatment the rest of us would get?

The Evolutionary Double Standard

A common criticism of possible or proposed genetic experiments, especially those involving humans, is that many attempts to improve the human genome may result in error, or that we may fuck it up and end up creating human beings worse off than if we had not altered their genes. But how does evolution happen? What is the "natural" process by which organisms adapt to their environments. Trial and error. The "natural" process is not guided at all. There are countless random mutations in random organisms, most of which make no difference or turn out to be harmful to the organism, and sometimes an organism gets lucky and ends up with a gene that gives it an advantage.

Is this how we want to continue to change and adapt to our environment? The "natural" way? A way in which we have to suffer through who knows how many horrid and grotesque mutations until we get lucky and end up with a few beneficial mutations every several generations? Is that really the more humane way to proceed as a species?

Sure, we may make mistakes as we try to guide our own evolution, but at least we'll be pushing it in the direction we want, and changes will be changes we design into ourselves. We will not be randomly rolling the genetic dice and hoping something good comes of it. To continue to subject humanity to that process doesn't sound very humane to me.