links for 2009-09-02

• MOMocrats™: Health care is a human right, and to quote a nice, elderly man from my hippie church "We all need to get off our asses and make sure this thing passes!"
  Healthcare needs to be our change we can believe in. If you believe that our current system is broken and that healthcare is a basic human right—that access to good healthcare is something that all people should have—then you, too, regardless of your political or religious affiliation, must take up this fight. It is only through the efforts of a very passionate and vocal grassroots effort that we are going to get HR676 passed.
  (tags: healthcare insurance reform business politics grassroots singlepayer)

Comments

[ktex]

I keep seeing reference to health care as a "right." But health care requires human care. In fact, without humans there simply is no health care. So how can it be a "right" to obtain services from humans?

[Maria Niles]

Hi ktex,

Thank you for your comment and question.

Having a right to health care is not the same as placing an obligation on individual provider to provide service. And all human rights are protected through the regulation and governance of human behavior to some degree. Otherwise we would have no governments, no laws, no rules, no regulations and we'd all be individual actors hoping and praying for a miracle that moral sentiment and human kindness would magically result in Utopian anarchy and not life in a scene from Lord of the Flies.

Let me give an analogous example. In the United States all children are believed to have a right to education. Therefore a collective burden of obligation is placed on society to protect that right. We do that through making free public primary and secondary education available to all children. No individual is required to teach and no teacher is required to teach without payment and no student is required to attend public schools and can choose private education based on ability to pay. However, you are not exempt from paying taxes if you do not believe in this right nor are municipalities allowed not to provide public education.

We recognize and protect a right to health care in many populations in much the same manner. Hospitals cannot refuse to provide emergency service to anyone. We recognize an obligation to the elderly and provide access to health care through Medicare. Military service members and their families receive Tricare through the government. Veterans and retired service members receive care through the Veterans Health Administration. Poor people can receive Medicaid. Poor children can receive care through SCHIPs. And, other than hospital obligations to provide emergency treatment, doctors are not required to become employees of the VA, doctors are not required to accept Medicare (nor private insurance for that matter) for payment. Despite the "right" to health care in these populations, no human is obligated to provide service. Nevertheless, many choose to do so. Despite the enormous cost, students still compete fiercely to get into medical school. Doctors choose to work in emergency rooms. Doctors choose to work for the VA. Doctors choose to accept Medicare. Many do so out of a sense of obligation and a belief in the right to health care. To my mind, the bigger problem is the perverse incentives provided by the current system that lead to the best and the brightest becoming plastic surgeons and cosmetic dermatologists because those are the one area where payment is not through health insurance nor protected by right and therefore they can charge whatever the market will bear and there is much to discourage physicians from pursing primary care as their specialty. We will eventually die out if we have no primary care physicians. But we will look good when we die ;)

Health insurance is no longer insurance in the sense that it insures against the risk of catastrophic events. Like with a car, you pay for oil changes and routine care but insurance covers events like when my car was nearly destroyed in a hail storm. Or you maintain your home but insurance covers a tree falling on it or it burning down in a fire. In the case of health care, insurance has become a payment mechanism by which you essentially cannot see a doctor without it and even routine care has become so expensive that few can afford to pay for it out of pocket even if they could find a doctor who would see them without having health insurance.

The argument for the right to health care in this country is often seen as flowing from the right as stated in the Declaration of Independence to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It is a right recognized in every other industrialized, wealthy, Western country (and many others) even though the right is protected by a variety of mechanisms. Personally I don't see how corporations which are legally considered people in this country have a right to profits when that often results in the death of humans and humans do not have a right to health care.

Best,
Maria

typepad@sixapart.com wrote:

[Maria Niles]

I also see that the link from my Delicious account to the original post referenced doesn't seem to work so here it is again:

http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/2009/08/health-care-is-a-human-right-and-to-quote-a-nice-elderly-man-from-my-hippie-church-we-all-need-to-ge.html

and allow me to clarify that answer to ktex's question above is my (Maria Niles's) opinion and not that of the author of the original post, Stefania Pomponi Butler AKA CityMama™ of MOMocrats.