Why our health needs government

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/index.html

Rest of the world has figured out the obligation never ends -- why can't we?

August 9, 2009

BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist

<snip>So I'll make it simple.

A baby is sick. Cute, dimples, but with a life-threatening infection. Should the baby get treatment? Even if her parents don't have health insurance? Or should we just let her die, clutching a sock monkey, slumped against the wall in a hospital waiting room?

We treat her, right?

How about if it isn't a baby, but a 5-year-old? Let her see the doctor, or turn her away? How about a 10-year-old? Does the obligation, as a moral society, to help that kid end when she's 13? Sixteen?

My point should be beginning to dawn on you by now. The obligation never ends. The rest of the industrialized world gets it. We don't. Not yet, anyway.

In Britain, with its ooh-scary socialized medicine, the infant mortality rate -- the number of babies per 1,000 live births who die -- is 4.85. In Canada, it's 5.04.

In the United States, with our illusionary freedom of choice, our rate is 6.26, putting us right between Cuba and the Faroe Islands.

About one baby per thousand worse than Canada. Which may not seem like much.

Unless it's your baby.