Reply #1: Medical in-sewer-ance should never be a "for profit" enterprise.

[TheMadMonk]

The incentive to cut "loses" is just too great.

Then again, I have a beef which probably puts me on the outs with a good many people over the extraordinary efforts taken with certain high profile cases, and the million dollar funds put together for individuals (usually children) who's plight plays a veritable symphony on our heartstrings.

The hundreds of thousands (and sometimes) millions of dollars spent on saving a single person's life (or just improving their quality of living) would save the lives of thousands who die of easily preventable disease. The only difference is that the one makes a good media story, and the many (in the minds of far to many (if they think at all)) are just dirty savages who should get their finger out and make for themselves a true blue Amurikan existence whatever the impossibilities standing in their way.

O.K. it's not realistic to ban such enterprises outright. Apart from anything else it smacks of Nazi eugenics. However, I do think it realistic and very very fair that such funds attract a 50% duty. Half to the poor suffering mediagenic kid, and the other half to Medicine Sans Frontiers, WHO, UNICEF and so on.