Let’s face it – idiots say lots of idiotic things. One “reason” to not reform the health care system to provide access to everyone is that “health care is not a right.” They’re right that the words “health care” are not mentioned in the Constitution, but they’re wrong that that is a reason to not help those 46 million people without proper access to health care.
You see, this is why some of the founders of our country didn’t want specific rights (i.e. the Bill of Rights) included in the Constitution. They believed that if they were to list certain rights, it would allow people to use that against others to deny them other rights that are not listed in the Constitution. They were correct.
However, just because a specific right isn’t enumerated in the Constitution doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that simply because a modern problem that afflicts this country didn’t exist when it was founded that we can and should simply ignore it.
You see access to education is not a right specifically spelled out in the Constitution, yet most people believe that access to a proper education is vital to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Folks with little or no access to education will certainly struggle in life and not reach their fullest potential. From my perspective, if we all do better, we all do better. In other words, if 46 million children had no access to education, people would be rightly freaking out because we’d have throngs of uneducated people who can’t take care of themselves. I’m not suggesting that we solved our education problems, but most of us agree that education is fundamental to the pursuit of happiness. Education is a right.
Health care is a little different. Where education is important in our formative years, health care is usually most vital as we age. Can a person achieve his or her life dreams without health insurance? Probably, but they’d be doing so while accepting a tremendous financial and personal risk.
I’m 37-years-old and I haven’t had health insurance since 2005. I’m one of those people who frankly chooses to not have health insurance because I’m healthy and feel like I can get by without it. If, however, I required some sort of emergency procedure, I could be wiped out financially. This is a serious financial risk that I’m willing to take but I don’t feel like I should have to take.
My problem is that I’m not dirt poor, so I can’t throw myself on the mercy of the government, I’d be expected to pay my bills and I would. But I’m self-employed and don’t make that much money, if I were strapped with $100,000 worth of medical bills, it would cripple me and likely force me back into a 9-to-5 job sitting in a cubicle writing code. While that’s not the end of the world, it’s not what I want to do.
I should not have to base my life decisions on whether I do or don’t have health insurance. Everyone should be able to live their life based on what they want to do with it – what they’re best at. Why should computer programmers, marketing execs and project managers have access to affordable health care, but musicians, artists and self-employed people don’t?
My point is that access to health care is a right and my guess is that people who don’t think so already have access to health care. Well they do now, but as wages continue to fall and the health insurance industry continues to pull in record profits (cough recession), they may not forever.
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More information:
- A penumbra is when rights are emanated from the Constitution but are not enumerated. The most famous case involving penumbra is Griswold v. Connecticut.
- Wendel Potter has a story on CBS News in favor of health care reform called “America Needs A Choice“
- Opposing the public health care plan is Rob Schlossberg with his story called “Public Plan is Unfair Competition“
- Watch a discussion on CBS new with Dr. LaPook with Potter and Schlossberg here
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