Reforming Health Care in The US: A Tutorial (Part 2)

2 comments on “Reforming Health Care in The US: A Tutorial (Part 2)”

1. KrikorD on September 24, 2012 at 12:01 am said:

   I really would like to ponder on the last paragraph. ” “Is Health Care a Right or a Privilege in these United States?” “. Depends on how you define “right” and “privilege”. Having a right, an inalienable right, has nothing to do with responsibility. Yes, you have a right to health care, we all have that. There is no law impeding you from going to a clinic, hospital or a facility for your health issues. But… you also have responsibility to pay for it – I’m not even going to get into the responsibility of maintaining one’s own health. I get the sense that when many refer to the “right” to health care, they mean free health care. There is NOTHING free in the world, especially not freedom – in any sense.
   Privilege of health care is another matter. This word is more applicable to the current healthcare system. Privileged health care goes into the tier system – the haves and have-not of society. Currently, economics impede access to healthcare for many and they see this as being denied the right to healthcare.
   Let’s take two polar opposites. We are each wholly and completely responsible for our health care. No money, no service. The other opposite is a complete state funded healthcare system and you can not get anything more. The janitor and CEO of a company get the same access – call it what you wish. Where does the ideological conflict start? It starts with the founding bases of this country – individual freedoms. There is a culture that we have constitutionally guaranteed individual freedoms. We can act accordingly so long as it does not impede another’s and no one is allowed to impede ours. I am going to spare you a protracted discussion on outdated ideas. This was founded in 1787, we are now 2012. The interdependency has gone from neighborly farms to earth is once again flat. There needs to be a paradigm shift in how we view independence. It should be interdependence.
   When all the entities mentioned attempt to iron out their piece of the pie, they should remember that the pie is finite. We can no longer live as an island seeking just our individual gains and rights. To the many I would say, you have a right to get health care and you always have had this. To the privileged I would say, it is the right thing to assure that all have access to health care. Eventually, we all stand to gain. Above all, we must have an educated populace for any of this to be understood and succeed.

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   • TGodfrey on November 6, 2012 at 12:41 am said:

     There is a noted author of the mid-twentieth century Carl Lotus Becker who wrote a book about freedom and responsibility in the American way of life. He argued for all the freedoms we enjoy in life here, we have equal responsibilities that go along with them. He made the point that we did not always honor them. I was tremendously impressed with his writing when I was in college. I think his argument applies today. We do not have a right to free care. We should have the freedom to access care that we need, and the responsibility to use it wisely and support it. It is a privilege to get great care, but it should not be the purview of the privileged. We need to talk about our responsibilities as well as our rights if we are to have access to good care. I don’t hear that going on. Dr. Deramerian is right on about our interdependence as a people. Our failure to work together in recent years has created problems for us. It has frustrated needed reform. If we can’t pull together after tomorrow’s election, we will see them get far worse.

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