Is health care a right or a privilege? If you ask the Europeans, the Canadians and Australians, health care is a right. If you ask Americans, nearly half will tell you that it's a privilege, though nobody disputes that emergency treatment at the nation's hospitals is a right.
We in America are deeply divided on the issue of health care. And we are conflicted, very conflicted. We want Medicare to be a right for our parents, and ourselves if we are age-qualified. We want children to have health insurance. We want the poor, through Medicaid, to have health insurance. We want our criminals to have access to health care - at our expense.
But we don't think that our taxes should pay for the health care of the unfortunate Americans who can't afford to pay the high premiums charged by insurance companies.
One could argue that old people have earned the right to Medicare because - generally - they have worked for many, many years and have contributed to the Medicare fund all those years.
People who are 65 and older are presumed to have contributed to the Medicare fund and therefore deserve Medicare in their old age. But how accurate is this, really? Americans who turn 65 - whether or not they have worked most of their lives - automatically are enrolled in Medicare.
Housewives who never worked a day in their lives, old retirees who lived most of their working years in a foreign country and worked in the U.S. for only a few years, are all eligible.
No matter how one cuts it, ultimately Medicare is a right - for old people.
Now, let's look at health care as a right. Why do old people have that right, while young people don't? Because young people are presumably working and their employers are providing them with health care? True, in the 1970s, in the 80s, in the 90s. But is this true today? More and more companies are dropping their health insurance because they can no longer pay for it. More and more companies are classifying their employees as independent contractors to avoid giving them benefits.
What happens to such people - the backbone of American industry - people who are not old enough to be on Medicare, not poor enough to be on Medicaid, not young enough to be on CHIP, the children's version of Medicare?
Small businesses cannot afford to provide health insurance to their employees, so employees who go through life working for small businesses live their lives without health insurance. Many of the older folks wait for their 65th birthday, hoping they do not get seriously ill, so they can finally have health insurance.
Artists, entertainers, musicians, writers, editors and other self-employed people go through their whole lives without health insurance. Because health insurance is so expensive, these Americans treat health insurance as a luxury that they cannot and probably would not be able to afford.
They buy auto insurance, renters insurance, credit insurance. They buy life insurance because it's so much cheaper, and they want their children to have something if they pass on prematurely because they don't have health insurance.
How many Americans are we talking about? The high estimate is up to a staggering 50 million Americans. The low estimate is 40 million.
Do those 40 or 50 million Americans have a right to health care? Not if you ask about half of Americans. This is Darwinian politics at their worst. This is the movie 2012, where only the lucky and wealthy - they have to be both lucky and wealthy - can be saved. The rest are left fending for themselves.
Whatever the actual number, the Democratic-sponsored legislation approved in both Houses of Congress will insure 33 million of them. And the Congressional Budget Office has certified that the legislation will not cost the country a dime. In fact, the savings to the U.S. government will be 100 billion dollars over the first ten years and more than a trillion dollars in years 11 to 20.
So why are the Republicans - to a man - opposed to health care reform now working its way to the reconciliation process and eventually to President Obama's desk? You have to ask the Republicans that, but don't expect a credible or cogent response.
There is none. What they want the country to do is to shelve the two health care reform bills approved by the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and start over. Yes, start over!
They want us to go back more than one hundred years, when Teddy Roosevelt was President and when health care reform was first proposed by a sitting President.
After the U.S. government has spent countless hours and billions on salaries and research and development costs, the Republicans want the Democrats to throw away all of that work and start with a blank sheet of paper.
They are not arguing the truly debatable question, such as, do Americans have the right to health care, or is it a privilege? The Republicans don't want to go there. They have conceded that health care is a right. They just don't think that the country can afford to act on this right. It's been 100 years since this question came up. Each time, Republicans tell us that the country cannot afford to act on the right of Americans to have health insurance.
Out of the goodness of their heart, the Republicans, through their House leader John Boehner, are proposing that 3 million out of the 40 to 50 million uninsured Americans should be helped. The rest, wait around a little bit, they will get their turn.
When there's a blizzard in hell. That's what the Republicans are asking the rest of the uninsured Americans to watch out for, because that very likely phenomenon - snow in hell - is not too far down the road.
Meanwhile, about 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day in this country, according to some studies. And, of the many bankruptcy filings in the U.S., two-thirds are filed by people who got sick and could not afford to pay their hospital and doctor's bills.
Also, a Harvard study demonstrates that those without health insurance are much more likely to die from sickness than those with insurance.
We have in this country decided that old people have a right to health insurance, so do children and so do the very poor. So do criminals. But for the great percentage of Americans - those who are neither young enough or old enough or poor enough, or criminals - they're on their own.
Who benefits from this system? The insurance companies, the drug companies, doctors, nurses and hospitals, the old, the poor and the young. The rest of Americans are getting squeezed and if you ask them, being screwed.
The country is in a state of vigil. We have lighted our imaginary candles. We have waited long enough, a few more days or weeks is no big deal. We are waiting for our legislators to get the damn bill passed. We expect President Obama to keep on top of these Democratic legislators and whip them into action. We think the President has it in him to muster enough courage and energy to get that ball across the goal line.
Next week: What are fair earnings levels for doctors? What should the top oncologists and surgeons make? Does society owe surgeons and other specialists their lavish lifestyles? If doctors are being compensated for saving lives, should they not charge millions for each life saved? Isn't human life, after all, worth millions?
