Filed under: Health Care | Tags: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Democrat, Democrats, Economy, Election 2008, Health, Health Care, Jesse Jackson, John McCain, McCain, Obama, Politics, Presidential Election, Republican, Republicans, Socialism
In my prior three posts on this topic, I have posited big picture items as they relate to America’s health care system. See Part III here:
I have shown how Republicans, in their endless compulsion to label, have effectively demonized universal health care as socialized medicine. Yet, I have shown how our private health insurance companies continue to adopt socialism as their economic model in the way they require contributions from every individual, not based on need or services rendered, but based on the need of the collective group.
I have discussed the reasons behind the Republicans’ scare tactics by examining just one company, Unitedhealth Group. Billions in profits, millions more in executive compensation, and still millions more wasted on corporate and CEO malfeasance. That money is taken out of the hands of consumers and placed in the backpockets of the wealthy. Instead of using those billions more wisely to provide requisite services, focusing on preventative medicine, and insuring all Americans, the money instead is lost down a cesspool of corporate greed and corruption.
If you will permit, I would like one additional big picture day, before I begin to compare and contrast America’s health care system and its results with the rest of the world. I want this one additional day to address the question of whether health care in the United States should properly be considered a right or a responsibility. That was the exact question posed to the candidates at one of the three presidential debates this year. Neither of them answered it sufficiently:
Grandpa McCain, in between his free of charge colonoscopies and cancer screenings, stated that health care in the United States was a responsibility. Meaning, every single individual was “responsible” for ensuring they could gain access to affordable health insurance. Only in the Christian right-wing orthodoxy could someone advocate forcing all pregnancies to term, then in their next breath state that a newly born infant was somehow responsible for finding health insurance. I realize that my summation of McCain’s response is taking his position to the extreme, but it isn’t an extreme for many Republicans who advocate the abolition of Medicaid and Social Security. How anyone calling themselves a Christian can support such an immoral stance is beyond me.
On the flip side, Obama clearly intoned that health care is a right afforded every American citizen. He has support for his answer by many on the left, including Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-jesse-jackson-jr/building-a-new-wall-the-f_b_146606.html
Jackson advocates a Constitutional Amendment codifying a basic right to health care for every American. While I do not necessarily believe such an Amendment is required to recognize that the document does inherently afford each and every American such protection, Jackson’s position correctly points out that placing it explicitly in the Constitution prevents subsequent governments from taking the right away without amending the Constitution a second time. Let’s not forget that the Constitution was previously amended to prohibit the sale, manufacture, and transportation of another much less consequential commodity, which was later repealed (i.e., liquor).
To me, health care is a right and a responsibility. As I watched that debate, I sat quietly and listened to McCain. I knew his answer would lack any reason or coherence. I rose from the couch as Obama began to talk, thinking, incorrectly, that he would nail the response by providing an answer noting the dual necessity for thinking of health care as a right and responsibility. Instead he failed as well, and I unleashed a trail of expletives usually only reserved for the current head coach of the Minnesota Vikings on any random Sunday.
Yes, health care is both a right and a responsibility. It is a right in that any nation purportedly representing the equality of all its citizens must recognize that the one factor potentially placing even the newest of its citizens at a decided disadvantage is the lack of access to affordable health care. How can a child viewed as an equal to another, when the first is lacking proper immunizations? How can one child who loses her mother to a preventable disease be on equal footing to another child from a wealthy family with access to the best doctors and hospitals? Access to health care is one area where we as a society can guarantee everyone is competing from a level playing field. In that respect, it is a right inherent in our Constitution.
Yet, it is a responsibility in that Americans need to take ownership of their family’s health. Grossly obese children is pandemic in the United States. People don’t eat properly and working out has become anathema to a busy and involved populace. Trigger locks should be made mandatory on guns. Even more public pressure should be directed at people to give up their cigarettes. Nobody expects perfection and a bunch of hard bodies running around American streets. I know I don’t need the distraction of more such women. But, our leaders can and should demand more responsibility from the nation’s citizens. After all, we already all pay for such overindulgence through the socialized private health care system.
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