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Building a New Wall: The Fundamental Right to Healthcare
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Bailout, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government Bailout, Health, Health Care, Health Care Amendment, Universal Health Care, Wall Street Bailout,
Politics News
Today's economic crisis, and the federal government's response, is like
putting a finger in the dike to avert a major catastrophe -- possibly
even a depression.
But as quickly as we plug one leak, another springs forth.
Congress is seeking to avoid deflation by pumping up public confidence and economic demand to encourage consumers who have lost faith and are operating on a psychology of fear. Most immediately and importantly, the credit crunch and consumer withdrawal is affecting the automotive industry. Millions of jobs and thousand of related suppliers are at stake if the auto industry fails, or if Congress fails to act. If this iconic sector collapses it's likely the American people will feel even greater economic pain over a more protracted period of time than is currently anticipated.
The truth is $25 billion may not be enough to save the auto industry. Worse, other troubled economic institutions may soon surface needing help. At some point Congress is going to run out of enough fingers, toes and elbows to plug the holes in our economic dike.
President Barack Obama will soon have to make a judgment to reform the nation's "wall" if he is, as he so often says, to build a more perfect union. The wall I refer to is the U. S. Constitution.
Candidate Obama said he can't bring the change we need on his own. He needs the American people to stay actively involved. At noon on January 20, he will say the following, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." If Barack Obama is going to be a truly transformative President I suggest he also can't bring the change we need, and he wants, with the Constitution as it is.
The Constitution is the wall that surrounds everything within it. The current wall consists of material from two central sources: a supreme law and the free enterprise system. The Constitution gives direction and authority to Congress, the president, federal agencies and to the states (under the Tenth Amendment). It is this sacred document that also grants the free market, our laissez-faire capitalist system, the legal authority to operate.
The First Amendment illustrates the interaction between these two wall-building materials -- the public and the private sides. That familiar amendment states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. That's it! The Constitution doesn't say USA Today, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Defender, AM, FM, Satellite Radio, Newsweek, Time, Channels 2, 5, 7, or 9, PBS or CNN. Nor does it state cell phones, i-phones, the internet, and on-and-on. So, while it's impossible to truly determine the economic impact of the First Amendment, the Constitution clearly has a major impact to our nation's economic vitality.
Because our current economic crisis is forcing us to think outside the box, one topic worthy of renewed discussion is health care. What if the Constitution said: "All citizens shall enjoy the right to health care of equal high quality and the Congress shall have the power to implement this article by appropriate legislation?"
Beyond the obvious benefits of greater and better health care itself, imagine the economic consequences: thousands of doctors and nurses being trained; new medical colleges established and older ones expanded; increased medical research; a massive preventive health care industry springing up; new hospitals in needy urban and rural areas with the private sector, federal, state, county and local governments all working cooperatively under the authority granted by the Constitution and Congress.
The absence of this human right as a health care constitutional amendment has major economic consequences as well. Preventive medicine is almost entirely missing from our current health care system, which costs taxpayers billions.
Of course, even without an amendment, Congress can pass legislation granting universal and comprehensive health care to all Americans. That's possible and candidate Barack Obama promised to do so in his first term in office. However, while high quality health care for all Americans can be established without a constitutional amendment, it can't be sustained without such an amendment. Future presidents and Congresses are under no legal obligation to continue past legislative programs. For the new wall of health care to be built and sustained for as long as the nation exists it must have a constitutional foundation!
How can we afford such a system? Without a constitutional right to health care we already spend nearly twice as much as any other developed nation in the world -- about $2.5 trillion or 16% of our GDP -- yet nearly fifty million Americans are without health insurance and often receive their care in the most expensive manner possible, in the local hospital emergency room.
With a health care constitutional amendment, instead of plugging a hole in the dike, we would be building a wall with a strong and solid foundation. Instead of spending money on more band-aids, a revised Constitution would give direction to a unique American purpose and, over time, solve an historic problem. And with American innovation we could put millions of Americans to work expanding a more balanced economic system on the solid foundation of health care for all. Health care would be a human right protected by the American people in our Constitution.
Congressman Jackson is a seven term Member of Congress serving on the Labor Health and Human Services Appropriations subcommittee. He is the co-author with Frank Watkins of A More Perfect Union, Advancing New American Rights.
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The time for Universal Healthcare is now. Lower-middle class, working class, and the poor make up the majority of the population, and universal healthcare is desired. How many more people need to file bankruptcy because they can no longer pay their healthcare bills? How many more people need to die because they can not receive good healthcare?
If anything, we are destined to be a nation of of high morals and character. If every passing generation we move toward a more inclusive society. Sure, there are many that choose to sell-out their integrity for money and hatred. At the same time, the goal of America has always been to make this country a truer democracy, a nation that sees the good of the common wealth as the ultimate good.
The time for universal healthcare is now.
The goal has never been a "truer democracy". Nor should it be. Democracy is mob rule. Read your history and then some philosophy.
"Democracy is mob rule"
??????????
I have read my history and philosophy and I don't know what the hell you are talking about.
Mob rule is a form of tyranny from the masses without reason...democracy in its best form is rule by the people by REASON and LOGIC..whereas, mob rule is rule by EMOTION.....
You must be reading too much aristocratic philosophy. There are those that see rule of a RATIONAL and LOGIC citizenry as a threat to rule of a few, which they should. A universally educated polity is the biggest safe guard against the rule of the few.
Re-read your history and philosopy books my friend...
Solutions really are very simple, when viewed from outside the stinking beltway swamp land.
Band aids are for owies. We need major surgery but the insurance companies won't allow it.
Single payer, universal care is the only way to go, modeled after our own medicare program.
Drug companies must be dealt with like Wal*Mart deals with their suppliers, with a big stick!
We need to invest in training more medics and pay the universities to do the drug research.
Congress needs to get their damn snouts out of the K St. trough and start representing US!!
Yeah, then it can be bankrupt too, like our medicare program.
Last I checked Medicare was a good program. The only problem with the program currently is the giveaways that Bush43 enacted in the perscription drug bill.
No problem though, that will be rectified soon.
What is "it"?
Medicare is not bankrupt. It is running ok, can be improved. Did you checkOverdog how many of relatives are enjoying it!
I depend on Medicare. I would be dead without it. Wait till you experience a serious illness.
Rather silly. Wouldn't you say "food" is more of a fundamental need than health care? Water is even more critical. Then comes employment. Then comes housing. Then maybe health care. So first we need an amendment mandating government supplied food, housing, employment, and housing. Ones these cornerstones of the socialist utopia are in place, we can consider health care. Oh, and don't forget transportation. How will get to our "free" health care appointments unless we have a constitutional right to transportation? Add that to the list.
I believe what Rep Jackson is attempting to illustrate with his post is that adequate healthcare is at least alluded to in the BIll of RIghts (Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).
As far as silly goes, I am guessing that you believe "Socialism" has no place in the American political discourse right?
To that I respond:
When you wake up tomorrow morning you should attempt to get ready for work in the dark (socialism built the electrical grid that provides power to your home). For that matter don't wash up with anything but rainwater boiled over an open frame (damn Socialist water delivery system)'
Following your challenging morning hygiene routine, skip breakfast. Without all the government subsidies paid to the Livestock and Agriculture businesses, food would never make it to your breakfast table.
When you get into your car to drive to work avoid the local streets and freeways (build by socialist tax dollars)
When you arrive back at your home following work, and the fire you started to warm up your morning bathwater has sparked up and started to burn your home down, don't call the fire department (you guessed it.... paid for by the collective socialist agenda).
My point is that contrary to your derision of Socialist practices, you would be hard pressed to live your life without the benefits that Socialist programs provide. But of course you knew that, right?
I read on another post that if the word democratic were substituted for socialsm, we'd have millions of converts in a minute. Just think ,the U.S.A. developing a democratic healthcare system. Has a nice ring to it.
The Constitution also provides for the government to promote the general welfare. Wouldn't general welfare improve with affordable health care?
While I've been on this soapbox for two decades, I have a lot more company now. Even die-hard GOP members are getting an up close and personal experience with rising premiums, deductibles and co-pays, uncovered items and contested claims.
In the last year a number of "don't want that damn socialist healthcare, here" types change their tune. All it takes is an illness in the family and for the bills to start showing up.
Nothing is free. But we currently pay more than any industrialized nation in the world and have poorer outcomes. The myth that we have "the best healthcare in the world" has finally be revealed for the "emperor's clothes it is. There's no there there any more and it's about time we joined forced to see that health/medical care is available to all who need it.
Ironically, much of our healthcare dollar is wasted on end of life service that do nothing to ehance the patient's outcome. Scan after scan, test after test only pads the hospital and doctor's bottom line. If you don't believe it read Shannon Brownlee's OVERTREATED. It's quite an eye opener.
Why is it that every other industrialized nation in the world manages to extend the right of health care to its citizens -- but the USA does not? I really hope that those against a nationalized health care would get seriously ill -- and then they would discover the depth of the problem.
"Sounds good on paper, but, right now, we are facing a shortage of internists, pediatrician, and family practitioners"
Link?
With the advent of new DO schools under every toadstool often with huge enrollments vs. their MD counterparts, it is difficult to find a shortage of family practitioners and internists in almost any reasonably populated area.
http://acponline.org/pressroom/primary_shortage.htm?hp
about Massachusetts...
Sorry, online access to my medical journal, the Annual Of Internal Medicine, is restricted to subscribers. The print edition with the article is "Primary Care Delivery Changes as Nonphysican Clinicians Gain Independence" 2008, 149, pg 597=600
It is shameful that the US spends more per capita on health care than any other country, yet we're 12th in overall health. We need to stop thinking health insurance and think health care. If we had universal health care, paid by taxes, we would be paying less than most of us pay now for private health insurance and, importantly, companies wouldn't be competing in a global market at a disadvantage to countries with universal coverage.
Who cares about "overall health"? The best health care is what we're about.
I totally agree with this article, 100%.
We do not have the "best health care." France, Germany, Netherlands are the "best." Also, what good is the "best" health care -- if you do not have access to "the best."? Your insurance company decides whether you will or will not get that treatment, that drug, that screening. I have been denied chemotherapy -- and i have cancer. I have been denied CT scans - and I have liver cancer. My doctor has advised me to go to Canada -- and I do, every six months -- to get the care that I cannot get here -- even tho' I have insurance.
Social Security, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act did not depend on a Constitutional Amendment to be enacted and though there are rumblings now and then about repealing those laws, they stand because of overwhelming public support. While I personally do believe that access to health care is a human right, I respectfully disagree that the way to codify that belief is through an amendment. We need only look at the fate of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) to see the likely fate of a health care rights one.
True. Sad, but true.
Heathcare for all citizens should be a right and not mearly a for-outrageous-profit business proposition. Shareholders making money off of other people's illness should be abhorent, especially since many can't afford to be made well. When is the dialogue going to highlight that the healthcare system as it is now wastes money, decreases productivity, and turns our great nation into an embarrassment. I support a constitutional amendment for this great cause and human right.
Then you will have to enslave doctors. Since health care will be your right, no doctor will be able to refuse care. Also, if demand outstrips supply, doctors will have to be drafted by the government to satisfy the right.
How come this never has happened in any other nation? The USA, as you know, is the ONLY country that does not regard health care as a right of citizenship. DO you think Americans are just more greedy than doctors in the rest of the world?
Oh please. Why is it that no other country has had to "enslave doctors" in order to provide universal health care -- a right enjoyed by everyone else around the globe -- but not Americans. Why?
The last thing we need to do is ammend the Constitution. Good lord. And what exactly would that accomplish? Saying everyone has a right to health care still doesn't help people afford health care. The Constituion says I have the right to bear arms. Does that mean the government is going to buy me a gun? No. One has nothing to do with the other.
Thank you for your tiny, unheard voice of reason.
A single-payer nationalized health care system --- just like every other nation on the face of the earth! Why don't AMERICANS have what other citizens have?
A nationalized single-payer health care system. That's what we need. It's LESS EXPENSIVE than the for-profit insurance driven system we have now. LESS expensive. (Not MORE expensive, LESS.)
Universal Health Care
A) No health insurance co's
B) No workmans comp.
C) No car liability ins.
The list could go on. Of course we have to pay for it, but there is big savings right there.
By "we" I assume you mean "the rich".
Sounds good on paper, but, right now, we are facing a shortage of internists, pediatrician, and family practitioners, as well as, nurses. It's not that it's harder to get into med school, it's more that people don't want to spend 8-11 training to do a job with RELATIVELY low pay and long hours....
Massachusetts with it's new coverage laws and mandatory insurance is having a hard time getting people through the system due to a MD shortage, and, since from college to practicing MD takes about 11-18 years of education and training, the fix isn't readily forthcoming...
As for entitlement, the government takes money from my tax bill and your tax bill and established and funds a military. That entitlement spending is okay, but healthcare spending is not? If you're to be "anti-entitlement" please forgo the hypocrisy and be "anti-entitlement" all the way.
Private health insurance is "entitlement" spending by your definition, too-is it okay if a private industry does it? Or do you really believe the insurance company has a little account with your name on it set up just for you?
Actually, it sounds like a nightmare on paper.
I think that this an idea whose time has come and it is ideally suited to the American system.
Rights to healthcare need not be a party political issue- look at the competitive disadvantage major US manufacturers are under with the burden of healthcare on their shoulders.
You already have a right to health care. Just go out and buy it.
Before I qualfied for Medicare, I paid $800 a MONTH for my health care insurance. I was unemployed (I couldn't work -- i was sick.) I took the money from my retirement account. A friend of mine was not so lucky. She died before she was able to find an insurance company that i) she could afford and 2) would take somebody with a pre-existing condition. She died. (USA has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in the world, meaning, fewer people in the USA survive cancer than any other country -- why do you think that is?
Yes, Overdog. Let them eat cake.
The total disregard that this country has for the health and well being of its citizens will be our eventual downfall. I get so tired of this word "entitlement" when we describe a national health care program. Why is is that these same people who criticize such a program don't complain about the trillions that we spend on wars in other parts of the world? The truth is that the system is comletely broken, and the Bush administration prefers to spend money on wars and bailing out financial institutions. The money is there, but the emphasis is not.
Because conducting wars is actually approved by the constitution, unlike redistributing wealth.
I advise you to read the first paragraph of the United States Constitution.
Health for all is a good idea, but it is not a right.
And as far as the Constitution, we haven't lived by it in over 50 years.
I'd suggest you folks get a copy and read it for yourselves.
Exactly. We'd probably have to shut down half of the government if anyone were actually to read the constitution.
The U.S. is only 60 + years behind Western Europe in providing universal health care. Polls indicate that citizens of these countries along with Canadian citizens would not want to trade their system for what passes for health care in the U.S.. There are plenty of workable models but then the corporate media, wingnuts and the Republican party will scream "SOCIALISM." The U.S. will come up with a half-assed solution that continues to benefit big pharma and insurance companies at the expense of the citizenry.
Bluedanube,
If you are prepaired to wait longer for services, file more paperwork and pay more in taxes, its a fine idea. I have read horror stories about universal healthcare, as well as private healthcare.
I like the ideals of universal healthcare, but I have not seen a proposal in which American workers do not suffer as a result.
My major concern is giving the government more power. Once we are provided with universal healthcare, they will determine that smokers and obese people tax the system because they have more medical problems. To stem the rising costs of providing services to these people, laws could get passed to control individual habits or to restrict an individual's coverage. See this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2057846/posts
Why don't you at least check out one how other countries (almost all other countries in the world) manage to do this? Why is it that other countries have no problem providing health care to their citizens?
The 1st amendment does not cost anyone other than the speak anything. The other amendments in the bill of rights are similar in that they do not take from another American under the force of law and give to another American this stolen good. This right to healthcare would be different. This would have a definate cost that is passed on to others. This is simply the government using force to require one American to pay for the healthcare of another American. This is most accuratly described as government sponsored theft.
So can we assume that you do not have car insurance or health insurance or any other kind of insurance? Oh, you DO have some types of insurance? How could that be? Having insurance means that you pay for other people's accidents and surgeries etc.
Except where it is mandated by government, pooling risk by buying insurance is voluntary unlike paying taxes.
BluePatriotWoman,
Nobody is forced to pay insurance, they cannot elect to not be covered. And you can choose your coverage and what you are willing to pay for, whereas a government run system determines your coverage for you.
For instance, in the UK certain life-prolonging drugs are not given to cancer patients because they are cost prohibitive. This could lead to the deaths of an additional 1,700 patients a year that could have been saved by the medication. There aren't alternative meds with the same success rate.
Here's the source artice:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2057846/posts
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