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?
From Frederick Kairuz (by email)
ReplyDeleteto me, health care is not a right..for employees, it is a benefit from their employers...for individuals we have to buy into it...when the administration approves it and gives public health, then it becomes a right
....my opinion..
From Aquilino Alcantara (by email):
ReplyDeleteit is my personal opinion that the role of govt is the protection of its people from predators and/or predatory practices ... and I consider sickness as a predator ... therefore I consider having health care for all to be right ... therefore it must be the same for all ... from the highest official of the land, the president to the most indigent american in the country ... but as a right, it must be funded as a priority above all else similar to the funding of the military and police in the protection of americans from enemies from within and from outside the country ...
boy alcantara
From Ken Stokes (by email):
ReplyDeletePerhaps a more accurate title for your blog might be, "Is health care?" And if you are the author of your blog isn't the length more appropriately determined by you, the author?
A critic of a recent story I wrote told me that I would have to make it longer to be called a "book" (I wrote it as a long short story) and I simply responded that I wrote all that I felt the story needed and suggest that perhaps it was time for him to pen a book of his own.
If you need more words to describe what you feel needs to be said then by all means use them. If there is interest in what you write there will be those that will read what you have to say; as for critics you can never please them, but that's the idea, isn't it?
Kenn
From Lawrence 5662000 (by email):
ReplyDeleteIt is amusing to watch the Republicans valiantly blocking healthcare for other Americans. No problem for them, they have good healthcare. One fact that gets left out of the debate that I think is worth bringing up is that we pay for free Universal healthcare for all Israelis. With the massive amounts of aid we give to that country they can easily afford universal healthcare. All those Republicans complaining about socialism in the USA are more than happy to send our taxes to Israel to pay for social medicine for them. The irony is that many of the American taxpayers who have their taxes sent to Israel, cannot afford healthcare for themselves or their family's. Another hot button issue for the reps blocking healthcare is that it might fund abortion. Just so happens that we pay for free abortions for Israelis. A jewish woman from anywhere in the world can show up at an Israeli hospital and demand an abortion. She will receive it, gratis; thanks to the largess of the American taxpayer. So next time you hear a congressman getting all red in the face over Social medicine being rammed down America's throat. Ask him why is it ok for our money to pay for Israel to have free medical, but not for ourselves? When they beat the podium and wring their hands about aborting American babies, ask them why they don't care about little Jewish babies?
From Eduardo Gimenez (by email):
ReplyDeleteChay,
We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal and are imbued with inalienable rights…
Let’s look at these words and analyze them. Are they self evident? They are now. They were not self-evident when they were first uttered. For one thing, slavery abounded. For another, then as well as today, we’ve had very little difficulty with ending “the inalienable right to life” of people in our own or in distant lands with whom we place ourselves at war. We will end a prisoner’s life via execution right here in our own homeland, making a mockery of the inalienable nature of the “right to life”. But we do hold the principle with deep love and respect even when we make mincemeat out of it in the real world. So are all men created equal? And are they all imbued with an inalienable right to life? Of course. Do we act in hypocritical opposition to this base principle? Yes, and often. But despite the hypocrisy, the base principle stands nevertheless.
Is healthcare a right? Yes it is but not in a self-evident sense. We need to think about it. We are comfortable with education as a right instead of a privilege. Enormous numbers of people in our nation look at healthcare as socialism and therefore antithetical to American values. But they do not see universal education in the same light. The principles are the same. Universal education and universal healthcare are both social programs where the entire citizenry pays for the immediate needs of the few because the same immediate needs, meet the long term needs of all.
So even if it isn’t self-evident, both healthcare and education are universal rights in America as they are in every nation that can afford to place healthcare and education as universal rights. These all stem from the self-evident, inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Love to all,
Danding
From David Bannister (via email, comment to Lawrence):
ReplyDeleteLawrence,
When was the last time you had a mental health checkup?
Do you read this fiction in Arabic, or do you have it translated for you?
In order for fiction to be worth reading, it must have some believability. Your believability is somewhere between zero and zilch.
David B