Ms Nicholls said the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading had shown her white prosthetic limbs and told she would have to pay for a darker one.
I suspect you are wrong on this, if she saw the limb. It would seem a little odd to complain about humiliation, otherwise.
How is a white coloured prosthetic cheaper than a black one?
Black skin color is probably more expensive if they produce the prosthetics in smaller numbers. I'm not in the prosthetic business, though, so I can't say.
I'm interested in what people think of this case; it has all kinds of tangents such as the effect of a market economy in the health service, institutionalised thinking about the needs of patients and, of course, dismissal of people's feelings about their disabilities.
I don't think it's a poor show, really. If the government is going to pay for medical services like this, it isn't just acceptable to take some steps to save money; it is absolutely essential. This isn't a dismissal of human feelings, but keeping them in the forefront of our minds, because it means that money can be used for either other government services (if you're on the socialist side) or a mortgage payment, grocery bill, or other needs (if you're on the libertarian side). The most obvious way to use money efficiently is to pay for the minimal functioning prosthetic, and let the consumer pay the difference for any luxuries. That's the rule, and here we have found an exception to the rule.
An entire race of people is getting poorer service because of it, and since we place such a high value on ending racial discrimination, it is worth the small extra cost of paying for the brown prosthetic for people with darker skin. So they corrected the problem and apologized, which is really all we should expect them to do. You might wish they had never made the mistake in the first place, but I think too many people are involved to expect no mistakes at all. |
