Consider epidemics in health debate

All the debates about health care today could only take place in this singular moment of time, in which epidemics are distant concerns.

Most of the diseases we suffer seem confined to the bodies they attack. Thus we can indulge in philosophical arguments as to who should pay and whether we have an obligation to do so.

With an epidemic, it all changes. Every patient is a source of infection to someone else. Failure to report to a physician when the first symptoms appear means that more people are infected. And so on.

Given the realities of what an epidemic is, a person being responsible for his or her health care is as sensible a proposition as being responsible for his or her nuclear shield.

Do you remember, a couple of years back, an outcry about U.S. resources being used to treat a lot of strangers in a continent far away? Me neither. At the moment, the outcry was that the government was not doing enough to stop the Ebola outbreak (well, they did stop it).

We better be ready to accept that the future will bring us more epidemics. More tropical diseases brought here, such as HIV or Ebola. Also more antibiotic-resistant traditional diseases, such as tuberculosis.

We had better have a health care system that takes this reality into account, and abandon philosophical debates that do not.

This story was originally published July 24, 2017 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Consider epidemics in health debate."