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Comment by ssivark | Hacker News Reader

How about simply turning away the unvaccinated from hospitals for Covid care? Is that less or more humane than holding them under house arrest?

PS: I think arguments justifying such mandates for avoiding overwhelming of hospitals will further enrage anyone who was already against universal healthcare because it becomes yet another avenue for govt/bureaucratic manipulation of people's lives.

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That's a political impossibility. Besides - whom to reprioritize? Pick the sickest person, the latest arrival, or what?

There was a case not too long ago in Alabama where a person suffered a heart attack and died because in three dozen hospitals no intensive care bed could be found, so the concern isn't even theoretical.

It isn't universal healthcare if you exclude anyone for any reason. It still can be public healthcare with alternatives for private insurance schemes. It would be most unwise to kill universal healthcare because of the threat or costs Covid poses.

Like many things in life, absolute universal healthcare is impossible. At limit it implies life without death and youth without aging. The utopian ideal must contend with the reality that resources are finite and accept tradeoffs.

You have set boundaries for the quality of healthcare, but it isn't utopian to not set any conditions for eligibility of health care. That are two different topics.

In the US, that would result in severe disparate impact on non-Asian minorities, because Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are currently the least-vaccinated groups.

Not really politically viable until these numbers equalize.

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