Healthcare: Right or Privilege?

Health Care a RIGHT?
11/14/07
To: NHPR – Laura Knoy for Monday show.
From: Seabury Lyon, Bethel, Maine; 207 836-2576

Once upon a time before the Military-Industrial-Government Complex, Americans were mostly rural and relied on direct sources of food, water, fuel, and shelter. Personal involvement in and responsibility for those needs has decreased with the transformation from direct personal sourcing modes to control of sourcing by corporate operations.

That transformation happens without anything one can reasonably consider as adequate citizen or government oversight. All too often, obscuration is intentional with the result that citizens have woefully inadequate awareness of resulting exposures or the long-term cost/benefit picture. With the advent of “Globalization” this sorry state of affairs is now being propagated abroad by corporate entities in the form of WTO, NAFTA, World Bank, etc.

While some aspects of quality of life improve for some populations, it is undeniable that tragic consequences have befallen segments of populations with little or no opportunity for them to correct the wrongs and improve their lot.

Here at home, medical statistics have shown that degraded diet, water, and air quality are responsible for billions of dollars in AVOIDABLE health care costs. That degradation has happened largely without citizen involvement in the decisions that brought it about.

Considering the above, one must conclude that:
a.) Health Care is a Human Right, and
b.) Preventive Care must include broad revision and oversight of all commercial activity that has human health implications.
c.) Federal level control must be implemented to protect citizen health and quality of life, at least until citizens are equipped to take on that responsibility.

Seabury Lyon
Bethel, Maine

listn'
The notion of a right to health care is silly. The health care worker's labor is his/her own. What possible claim could be made to that person's valuable work that would not also apply to the Barber, the Farmer, or the Auto mechanic? Just because you need something does not create a duty for me to give it to you. We have a market for the exchange of this property.

The pricing problems stem from too much, not too little government interference in the market. Prices are "buoyed" by the flood of government and 3rd-party payments, what do you care what the bill says: you're not paying it!

I may have a right to prevent my neighbor from fouling the air at my home with a herd of hogs (quiet enjoyment). But I cannot require him to plant flowers even if a judge or legislature orders that I have a "right" to fragrant air!

Here in the US we recognize that our rights come from our creator.
He is not known for making new ones this late in the story.

Ed Ware
Weare
listn'

"The right to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness", as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independance are foundational principals apon which our society and country are based.

It's by no mistake that those rights were listed in that order. In order to persue hapiiness, one must have liberty. In order to have liberty, one must first have life. Therefore, the right to life is the most important of all as it is a prerequite of all other rights.

The degree to which one has access to life-saving and life-preserving care in this country can be directly corelated to how much care a person can afford. By choosing to protect the liberty and rights of those who decide to "persue their happiness" by working in the healtcare industry and make as much money as possible in the process, we are denying those who can't afford that care, their basic right to life.

Therefore, conservatives who proclaim they are protectors of the right to life on one hand, but defend an industry that deny's life-saving and life-preserving care on the other, are not only contradicting themseves, but are at odds with the very founding principals apon which our country is based.

Vernon Thornblad
Bennington, NH

laura, i am totally frustated every time i hear of the unfair comparison of canada vs. our health care system. the reason canadians may have to wait for procedures and we wouldn't have to under the same system is because they fund their system with much less than we do presently. if we put the funds in a single payer system that we do now we would have a system that would meet our citizen's needs.

Is Healthcare a Right or a Privilege?

The question itself belies,(and in a very subtle way promotes) a lack of understanding of the INTENTION of the United States Constitution.

The real reason we have a 'health care crisis' today is that WE THE PEOPLE have long since abandoned the recommended VIGILANCE over the encroachment of GOVERNMENT into the affairs of INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS. One of the first nails in the coffin (of OUR CONSTITUTION) was driven in a little court case in 1886 (referred to later). The truth is that the Insurance Corporations, their Professional Lobbiests, and the Legal profession (in large measure), along with a complicit Legislature (whose political campaigns were greatly funded by the above) are responsible for the Laws that exist about public health care. Hence, the 'health care crisis'.

If Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Mason, Matthew Thornton, James Bartlett, Wm. Whipple (you get the idea) were alive today they would be horrified to see even the idea the GOVERNMENT should be involved in these matters as we see them today.

Whenever a question is posed, or a comment is made that refers to our Founding documents (Declaration of Independence/Constitution,including the Bill of Rights) we must ask ourselves what was the INTENT of the Founders and what was then philosophical CONTEXT from which our government was born.

It is crucial to understand that OUR (We The People) system of government was invented and created at (perhaps) the height of the 'Age of Enlightenment' (In Jefferson's Monticello parlor hang portraits of Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon). One of the inestimably important opportunities in forming a NEW FORM OF GOVERNMENT in the Founder's minds was the opportunity to make a clean break from the influence of RELIGION over GOVERNMENT, while simultaneously allowing for personal beliefs to be unimpaired by government influence. Our government was created by REASON over BELIEF, yet is sprang from the influence of religious beliefs prevalent at the time. Among those beliefs was the idea of NATURAL RIGHTS. It was thought that NATURAL RIGHTS emanated from a power higher than the powers of men/women. Hence: (from the Declaration of Independence)'...that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed'.

The idea is clear: we are ALL endowed with (born with) those 'natural' rights. No one has RIGHTS superior to another. Again, we are born with those rights - they are NOT 'granted' by GOVERNMENT. Indeed they cannot be granted at all, we are born with them.

Now then:

1. 'We the People' have rights to believe, say, and publish/distribute
those beliefs (First Amendment, Bill of Rights) as we individually choose. The purpose being, to persuade one another through the faculty of REASON via public discussion/intercourse. By extension, the creation of GOVERNMENT comes/came about by those means.

2. OUR Government (system of laws, whose FOUNDATION is THE CONSTITUTION)
was viewed as a means to 'secure' LIBERTY for INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS so that THE PEOPLE would be free to negotiate amongst THEMSELVES (not with Government)the daily transactions of trading goods and services.

The revolutionary idea of American Government, OUR GOVERNMENT was that INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS (not corporations) were in fact FREE to negotiate WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. Congress gave itself the power: '...to regulate Commerce, with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes...' (Article I, section 8) but did not give itself the power to DICTATE the terms of negotiations between INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS.

It is my firm belief that the Founders' REASONing was impeccable.
Further, if INDIVIDUALS, not corporations (who were by trickery and deception allowed to be viewed in Courts of Law as PERSONS...see 1886 case Union Pacific Railroad vs. Santa Clara County and it's headnotes and then research who helped craft the specific wording of the Fourteenth Amendment) were free to negotiate among OURSELVES, there would be honest free market competition and all products and services, including HEALTH CARE, would meet their naturally developed cost. In other words, Health Care would be available and accessible to ALL.

Of course all my wind is for the most part falling on deaf and hand covered ears... all to the glee of the people taking advantage of the poorly informed CITIZENRY, and not to CONSTITUTIONALLY INFORMED CITIZENS; who would have had years of practice and would have developed a sense of SELF RELIANT REASONING; which have sadly been both willfully ignored and intentionally deadened by covert propaganda/advertising by the same gleeful people who profit from the current state of affairs.

Health care is a human right, and everyone has a responsibility to contribute to the system.

However, many uninsured are essentially cut out of the healthcare system, even though they contribute to it.

If someone is working and paying Federal payroll taxes and/or income taxes, they are contributing to Medicare, Medicaid, the military, the NIHs, etc.

If someone is paying property taxes, room and meals tax, or any other state taxes, they are paying for the healthcare of teachers, firemen, police and government workers at the state, county, and town levels.

Yet we expect a low or moderate income family to then go out and buy private insurance on top of that. And pay the same premium as a family with a 6-figure income. Plus deductibles and co-pays. No wonder they show up in ERs.

I'm a state representative, but in my non-pubic life, I'm a self-employed freelance graphic designer. I have bought my own health insurance for about 25 years.

In the past year, my business had a significant downturn. In May, my insurance premium went up 35%. I finally had to drop my health insurance. While right now I could afford to pay SOME money toward health insurance, I certainly cannot pay what the private plans charge, and I can't buy into a government plan. I'm almost 59 and while I'm in good health now, staying healthy and getting good primary care is essential, but I'm shut out of the system. If I did have a serious accident or illness, I could face bankruptcy.

All the years I paid into health insurance now counts for nothing.

As a state rep, I could buy into the state health plan. But I can only afford about half the premium that is charged.

The states surrounding NH have all put in place plans to move to universal health care, and have provided an avenue for the uninsured to be included in the healthcare system. It's time NH did that too.

Jill Shaffer Hammond
Peterborough NH