Over the last few months, I have taken part in a number of ad hoc online discussion on facebook and other places about health care. In a number of cases I was responding to the challenges of conservative friends. I've tried to pull that content together here.
Ethics: Is health care a right or a privilege?
Many folks have said that health care isn't a right. Its an interesting argument. If health care is a privilege and not a right than are conservatives saying health care is only for the privileged? The people without health insurance are not the poor (they are covered by Medicaid). The people without health insurance are working folks who aren't poor enough to get Medicaid and aren't well off enough to afford health insurance. If its not a right, who should go without? Who makes that decision and by what criteria?
These fundamental questions seems to be a stumper for folks on the right. With such an argument, you put the honus back on the conservative position to determine who should go without. Should people go without health care simply because they can not afford it? Essentially we ask, Who among us would deny essential health care simply because of their financial position? Such questions are unsettling not only because they reveal the conservative position as heartless, but also because we have long established our Western system of ethics around health care through the Hippocratic oath. Doctors are obligated to provide care through such an oath as it provides much of the basis for our medical establishment today.
In so many of the arguments you will not hear anything about guaranteeing affordable coverage for all, nor confronting big insurance companies that deny or drop coverage, or anything about accountability for insurance companies within the system. Rather the Right has thrown together a series of dishonest proxies such as death panels, socialism, Nazism, and other ridiculous bogeymen. Associating the ethical goal of covering all Americans with such, riles up a populist sentiment among the radical right, but such hyperbole easily falls by the wayside when confronted with both rational arguments and facts.
As President Obama stated in speech to Congress, providing health care is about our moral character as a nation. Every other civilized country (and plenty of uncivilized ones) in the world guarantees health care to their citizens. The United States joining the world in guaranteeing health care to citizens is as statement of our fundamental moral values and ethical principles. Fundamental to achieving life, liberty and happiness is that your health is maintained through both your own personal maintenance of health and the guarantee that should you get sick, medical care will be available to you.
Next time: Economics - Is there reason for the government to act?