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Blueberry comments on Open Thread: June 2010 - Less Wrong
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True and they wouldn't deserve it, but the truth is, there are a lot of really awesome effective drugs that either take forever to get approved, or don't get approved it at all. This kills people, too.
And there are a lot of diseases, like bronchitis, that are easy for a person to diagnose in themselves, and know that they need an antibiotic, but it costs a hundred dollars to see a doctor to tell him what he already knows so he can get the medicine, and if that's the difference between him paying the rent or not... and, hypothetically, he dies because it goes untreated.
It's more a propblem of political viability rather than anything else.
And then they misdiagnose it, and antibiotic resistance increases, and then the antibiotic doesn't work when they need it. Or they diagnose it but miss a warning sign for another disease that a doctor would have noticed and tested for. No thanks, I'd much rather have people who have gone to medical school for years make that decision.
And I'd much rather the decision to trust doctors be made by the people to be affected, rather than politicians (who have not done any school / training in particular).
The "people to be affected" are the general public, who suffer when contagious diseases aren't treated properly, and the general public makes these decisions through elected politicians. Also, these decisions are frequently based on recommendations by administrators with degrees in Public Health.