[ExI] H+ Healthcare

[Stefano Vaj]

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:58 PM, <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
> I bring this up because if we have a universal healthcare, how will elderly
> people be handled? Will they be considered too old to repair?

It depends on the built-in incentives.

I should say that in Italy physicians are inclined to do everything to
anybody in any case, even beyond reasonable, since this is going to
expand their budget, egos and leverage in their pecking order.

This, OTOH, is part of the reason you might have to wait: no matter
how many resources you throw at the NHS, it tends to gobble all of
them and then demand for more. You feel a vague pain at a corner of
your ringfinger nail? Let you have a brain nuclear magnetic scanning,
just in case, along with a full check-up, and since we are at it, you
should meet a nutrition specialist to check whether your lean mass
proportion is OK.

This of course has a societal cost which is probably unsustainable,
and somewhat at odd with people dying in the street from starvation or
cold in wintertime and other similarly trivial problems. But of course
it may be occasionally good for the first patient in line, and also
for transhumanist purposes.

-- 
Stefano Vaj