Universal access to quality health care (UHC) is one of the few things that keeps me just over the line in the lower left quadrant of the Political Compass test.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/testBut my empathy gland is running mostly dry, as so many of the diseases ravaging the first world especially nowadays are ‘lifestyle’ illnesses brought about by overactive forks, unsophisticated palates, treating food as entertainment and comforter and collusion between government regulators and Big Farm-a.
I don’t believe that health insurance should cover people who choose to trash their health, eg., smokers and the obese, but this is so challenging to police, because how do we then assess the spinal reconstruction surgery and rehab for the skydiver...?
I don’t believe that free boob jobs or re-assignment surgery should be given to gender dysphorics.
Or that doctors should be operating as drug (especially antidepressant) dispensaries.
In short, my support for UHC is mostly in-principle, with a very high threshold for inclusion - basically, emergencies and bona fide disabilities.
But there are so many inherent dangers in governments becoming the Santa Claus of “free stuff” that the closer I analyse it - and current politics has made that a necessity - the more rapidly I’ve been shedding the socialist sympathies of my more youthful self.
I’d frankly prefer we look after veterans better and at the same time stop sending them to wars. If we could just stop feeding that mil-industrial machine THEN we could look at a more widely-scoped and enriched healthcare system.