Italy Is Rationing Coronavirus Health Care, Only Those who Qualify Receive It
To follow up on yesterday's blog about the distribution of scarce medical supplies and services it is helpful to review what is happening in Italy. Italy has been hammered by the Corona virus. It's medical services and medicine cannot keep up. Thus, some people must go without.
Just as a woman decides whether to remove a fetus the government and doctors of Catholic Italy is deciding who lives and who does not. The woman must decide if her time, money and energy can better be spent on her existing child or some other goal and have an abortion if it seems best for her. The government of Italy must decide if its medical resources can better be used on someone young and otherwise healthy than on a sickly older person. Apparently, the myth that one fertilized egg is a human being with all the same rights as a citizen walking the streets seems just as nuts to Italian Catholics as it does to me.
One would suppose that Italy, the country where the tiny enterprise called a "country" the Vatican is located, would have politics strongly influenced by the Catholic Church. About 3/4 of Italy self identifies as Catholic. Yet, abortion has been legal there since 1978. It has to mean a majority of Italian Catholics vote for politicians who, in turn, vote in favor of legal abortion.
Italian Catholics then have a more rational approach to medicine in both their religious and secular sectors. They endorse women making their own decision about their bodies and endorse leaders and doctors who make decisions based on the most productive way to use scarce medical resources.
We may, or may not, have such big numbers of sick people in the U.S. that healthcare will not be available for all. Whether it does or not, I'm hopeful rational thinking will come to prevail and anti abortion politics will pass into history as it should.
FYI - the Vatican is not part of the country of Italy. It is its own country.
ReplyDeleteThere is no abortion analogy, try as you might.
The mother of an unborn child can give up the child for adoption. Boom, there goes your argument. Equating a baby with COVID-19 is a mentality that needs to be vaccinated against. Thank God for President Trump and the adults in the US Senate. We've seen what has happened to the Democrat Party (the House of Representatives).
ReplyDeleteMatt "Boom, there goes your argument."
ReplyDeleteI guess you are unaware giving birth costs money. Perhaps you do not know women lose weeks of work when they have a birth.
Emphasizing, prioritizing, and sorting are human activities essential to existence. Individuals and organizations of individuals engage in these behaviors in order to function. Decisions are required and all have consequences. Most are mundane. Sometimes the consequence of a decision is a matter of life and death. Ask a Navy Corpsman or an Army Medic responsible for the care of men and women wounded in the heat of battle. Ask the family of a comatose loved one with no vital signs other than those provided by machines. Decisions and consequences. Does a mother seek medical care for her seriously ill child or should she rally her prayer group and abdicate responsibility to the will of an invisible deity? Does a woman with an unintended pregnancy decide the fate of the fetus or does she bend to the will of some unknown anti-abortion zealots? Emphasizing, prioritizing, and sorting, it’s name is triage. All to often tough stuff.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm beating a dead horse here saying there will be decisions about who lives and dies, but I came across this article by two authors I would call eminent authorities. The article outlines how damage from the epidemic must be attacked and what they says seems very realistic. It is to aggressively build hospital beds, manufacture respirators, test kits, develop a vaccine and practice social distancing. Then, they add this sentence that all this may not take care of everyone "...meaning providers will have to make decisions about whom to treat and whom not to treat."
DeleteThe positive side of this is that today our healthcare costs are high in part to the huge amount spent at end of life. Maybe if we once get over the anti abortion politics we can see a better standard of living for all.
what do you say to a mad person? you don't say anything, it's useless. let he/she enjoy his/her mental state and hope to hell that he/she never gets enough power to impose his/her madness on the rest of us.
DeleteUnknown Mar 20, 2020 @ 1:00 PM
Delete“hope to hell that [he] never gets enough power to impose [his] madness on the rest of us.” Now that we have a first class bully at the presidential bully pulpit imposing his madness on the rest of us, keep hope alive that we survive until we put him back on his golden throne at the tower where he can relieve himself in private. To that end I will donate a case of Angel Soft to sooth his tender ego.
again what do you say to a mad man? that's you Bunkie.
Delete"Let a man speak long enough, and sooner or later he will prove himself to be a fool."
ReplyDeleteActually the quote goes; ... "he will prove EVEN TO himself to be a fool". With Jon, that won't happen.
There is finally some discussion out in the public about what is likely to happen when this country has a shortage of ventilators. Probably there will not be a shortage everywhere but in some locations people will be denied one based on someone's assessment of their probable survival.
DeleteThe crazy thing emerging is that officials told the President and high staff people this was likely coming. Things like testing kits were available for purchase in other countries. I would guess ventilator manufacturers could have put on extra shifts and helped offset this problem. The Republican governors of Iowa where I live and ND seem capable and on top of what is happening. It seems like the Republican Senator majority and the President's circle has their hands in their pockets and are looking down at the floor.
Link discussing access to ventilators and hospital beds:
Deletehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-in-washington-state-few-ventilators-and-facing-grim-decisions-ahead/ar-BB11txL2?ocid=spartandhp