To Promote the General Welfare: Health Care Legislation

To those who believe the Constitution does not include health care reform, I suggest that they re-read the preamble to the Constitution, which says that in order to form a more perfect union we must, "...insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense," and "promote the general welfare..."

Access to affordable health care will help insure domestic tranquility, it will provide a common defense against illness and the exorbitant cost of health care, and it will indeed promote the general welfare. Nothing is more crucial to the general welfare of American citizens than their health and that requires access to affordable health care.

In the midst of all the misinformation and street theater surrounding the issue, Americans who recognize the need for health care legislation need to speak to their extended families and neighbors about what the legislation will do for them. Clarity is of the essence.

Health care legislation will accomplish three essential objectives:

1) It will ensure that Americans have health insurance even when they lose their jobs or are between jobs.

2) It will ensure that Americans who suffer catastrophic illnesses will not have to lose their homes or go bankrupt in order to pay for treatment and hospitalization.

3) It will cover children who are out of college, but have not yet found jobs.

Also -- If the legislation includes a public option -- it will lower costs by offering the choice of less-costly insurance.

The legislation, if passed, won't satisfy everyone, but if it includes at least three if not all of the above, it will be a major step forward. Considering the well-financed campaign by powerful interests to defeat health care legislation--passing it with three of the above would be a real victory.

My passion for achieving health care reform stems from several real-life experiences. One summer, when I was in college, I worked for an insurance company. I was hired to re-write form letters, and to compose letters to policyholders after talking with them on the telephone. Often, I had to inform policyholders who had paid their premiums regularly and on time, that they were not covered for treatments and hospitalizations they thought they were insured for -- and I sometimes had to tell them so when they were already in the hospital or newly discharged. I was still young and idealistic enough to be astonished that an insurance company, and the respectable executives who ran it, were deliberately taking advantage of people when they were most vulnerable -- in order to make a profit. I left before the end of the summer.

Years later, I was a public relations person for a teaching hospital. One of the stories I worked on for a television news report was about a twenty-five-year old woman who was placed on an artificial heart pump (the first patient to have the pump in that hospital) while she waited for a donor heart. When I spoke with her parents, her mother told me they had mortgaged their home and gone into overwhelming debt to pay for her treatment. The young woman eventually got the donor heart, but she died less than a year after her transplant. When she died, I thought of that conversation with her mother and how her parents had now lost their only daughter -- and were facing unimaginable debt.

In my work, I witnessed men, women and children who turn to the Emergency Room as a last resort when they are ill because they don't have health care insurance. In 1992, I worked with two producers from NBC News who featured the hospital's Emergency Room in a Tom Brokaw primetime special on how emergency rooms are serving the uninsured. After all these years, one would think by now, we would have insurance for the uninsured.

I witnessed, also, the mountains of paperwork that must be completed by patients and insurers and processed by hospitals -- and how archaic and repetitive it is.

More recently, on a flight, I sat next to a sixty-one year old New Jersey woman who was on the second leg of a connecting flight from Turkey where she'd gone to have crowns put on her teeth. She told me the cost per tooth, in Turkey, was one-eighth of what it would have cost her in the US.

This is the United States of America -- surely we can do better to promote the general welfare -- the good health -- of our citizens.

Comments

[mamalisa38]

For profit health care, by it's very definition, is immoral. The only way to maximize profits is to raise premiums, deductibles and deny claims. The only answer to the health care crisis in this country is single payer.

[DrChill]

I think you're confusing health care with health care insurance.
I don't mind if a researcher profits from his cure for cancer, or if a hard working doctor profits from his good work. Insurance is the business of managing risk, which needs profit to attract private investment.
But insurance companies have captive audiences and weak competition. They shed risk to manage profit. This raises the question of private or public health care insurance.

I actually think congress is on the right track. A viable public option will force needed reform, and force private insurance companies to survive by providing attractive plans pay for prevention, and more comprehensive and sensible care.

[Parducci]

The 1828 edition of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language contains the following definition of the word "welfare" was defined 40 years after it was written in the Constitution:

WEL´FARE, n. [well and fare, a good going; G. wohlfahrt; D. welvaard; Sw. valfart; Dan. velfærd.]
1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons.
2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applies to states.

A clear distinction is made with respect to welfare as applied to persons and states. In the Constitution the word "welfare" is used in the context of states and not persons. The "welfare of the United States" is not congruous with the welfare of individuals, people, or citizens.

The general welfare clause of the Constitution has nothing whatsoever to do with health care. You may find justification for changes to the health insurance system that we presently have, but you will not find it in the Constitution.

[Solange]

The states, as you say, are comprised of the persons who live in them--and the general welfare of those persons depends in great degree on the state of their health. We are all in this together as Americans--we rise and fall together. In this century we should be advanced enough as a society to provide access to affordable health care to all our citizens as our allies the Canadians, French and British.
The opponents of effective health care legislation would have been against fire when it was discovered, against the wheel when it was invented; they would have insisted that the sun circles the earth, that the earth is flat and that Columbus would fall off the edge of it if sailed across the sea. Thank heaven for progressive men and women--without them we would still be living in caves! Thank heaven for American progressiv­es--withou­t them, we'd still be a British colony.

[Parducci]

That's an interesting opinion, but I notice the total absence of any supporting factual information such as I cited.

[roddack]

The preamble of the constitution grants no powers to legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Powers granted to the branches appear in Article 1, 2, and 3 respectively. To suggest that the preamble grants powers means that the 10th amendment is negated in the sense that general welfare an mean anything that the current congressional majority decides. This interpretation would set a dangers precedent that would leave the ability for abuse very high. The executive attempted to expand its power during the last administration we should not let this trend continue with the legislative. We should instead move to limit their powers and amend the constitution if we want the federal government to provide health-care. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/denise-dennis/to-promote-the-general-we_b_253593.html#

[Jane Hill]

Angered participants have disrupted town hall meetings across the country. While my initial reaction was to be put off by the rudeness of the participants, now I am furious with them and all health care interests and politicians who encourage them. The current situation with health care in this country is not sustainable—it doesn’t take a triple-digit IQ to figure that one out.

What makes me so furious is that all of these protesters appear to be old enough for Medicare. It dawned on me that in addition to the $7,000 that I pay annually for health insurance for my family (not including my ex-employer’s contribution), I am also paying 2.9 percent of my consulting income to subsidize these protesters’ health care. They have the most secure health care in the country and they are the least susceptible to the outrageous premium increases that I have experienced, and yet they are trying to shut down any kind of meaningful discussion.

Until they are paying for their own health care or they have something worthwhile to add to the discussion, they need to sit down and shut up. And we, the voters, need to send home those politicians who encourage them.

[Really]

My, what an ignorant statement.­.. the elderly are the ones most at risk of having their healthcare rationed or denied completely should the government put a system in place where decisions are made according to budget or quality of life, as is already being done in countries with Nationalized Healthcare such as England, Canada, and Australia.­.. and you think they shouldn't have a voice or be concerned?

I wonder how you'd feel if someone told you to sit down and shut up about an issue that so significantly and directly affected you or anyone in your family.

You should be ashamed of yourself for exposing such a self-centered, arrogant and demeaning attitude toward others... I doubt you'll like it when someone tells you to sit down and shut up when you're a senior and your rights are being threatened­...