Editorial: Finite health dollars must provide the greatest good

One can’t help but feel sympathy for any person dealing with a serious medical condition. People don’t say that without your health, you’ve got nothing, well, for nothing.

And one of the principal reasons most intelligent nations have brought in socialized medicine, treating health care as a human right, is because all of us, rich or poor, can be struck down by a medical crisis at any time without warning, often without any clear reason.

Knowing that, it is natural to feel empathy for anyone who becomes ill, even if they are not someone you like or if their lifestyle contributed to their illness — smoking, for instance. But we feel a special empathy for people who are born with medical problems, especially children. No one deserves poor health, but little kids, particularly, do not.

Dan Sammartino, the 51-year-old Nelson man featured on our front page on Tuesday, who needs surgery to repair a defective heart valve that he was born with, is certainly someone deserving of our empathy, concern and, of course, B.C.’s generally excellent publicly funded medical system.

What he does not deserve, nor should he receive, is the right to demand a more expensive treatment that he does not need simply because it would be more convenient for him.

We have finite dollars to spend each year on health care, as it does with other types of public spending. This means that hard choices need to be made to use those limited health dollars to provide the greatest public benefit. That is the moral decision.

In Mr. Sammartino’s case, as well, the long-term effectiveness of the new, more expensive heart-valve procedure he seeks isn’t as well known as the older, tried-and-true method. His wish for the convenience of a speedier recovery isn’t the only consideration.

Primarily, he should feel grateful, as he likely does, that his doctors, with public funds, will almost certainly return him to good health.




Vancouver Flyers

