A Right To Health Care?

Recently, I’ve seen an increase in the assertion that Americans don’t enjoy a right to health care.  I’ll stipulate that I don’t see anywhere in the Bill of Rights any kind of statement that says anything like, “All Americans have a right to health care”, ok?  Agreed.  But don’t jump to the end.

Starting at the beginning of the Constitution, one discovers the founders expressed their opinion about why this new government should exist in the first place.  They defined, in general terms, their vision of the most basic responsibilities of government.  They wrote:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence (sic), promote the general Welfare (emphasis added), and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Only 26 words into the document it says: “…promote the general Welfare…”

I started thinking about the word “Welfare” as it might have been understood in the late 18^th century – as opposed to today’s social safety net.  Checking my (admittedly not 18^th century) dictionaries, I found that my American Heritage Dictionary defines welfare as “Health, happiness, and general well-being”.

I turned next to the Internet and the Oxford English Dictionary.  OED is one of the most respected dictionaries of the English language.  Ok, they charge for access so I looked at the Compact Oxford English Dictionary online.  They define “welfare” as “the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group”.

Turns out, one can’t define welfare – as it relates to the human condition – without including health.  Well, in fairness, Webster’s tries.  They leave out ‘health’ and put in ‘well-being’ but when you look up ‘well-being’ in the same dictionary, it specifically includes “the state of being…healthy…”

The Founders were a clever group of guys with a solid command of the English language.  I think they knew what the word ‘welfare’ meant when they wrote “promote the general Welfare”.  They could have written, “promote the general health, happiness and general well-being” but they didn’t need to.  There’s a word for that: welfare.

If one plans to take the position that Americans don’t have a “right” to health care since such a right is not clearly delineated in the Bill of Rights, then one must simultaneously argue that one does not enjoy a right to vote.  Voting, after all, is not spelled out in the Bill of Rights, either.

But whether or not one defines health care as a “right”, certainly the Founders described it as a fundamental function of government.  Without question, I have the right to expect my government to perform its most basic functions.

Beams and Motes, Logs and Specks…

I read that Patrick Kennedy has been asked not to receive “holy communion” in a row with a Catholic Bishop over his stance on abortion.

Really?

Do you suppose the Catholics are worried about the falling number of young boys available for molestation?  For my money, the Catholic Church has the exact same “moral authority” as NAMBLA.  Do you suppose the church has taken the same stance toward its pederast priests?

“You hypocrite“, Jesus said, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”  (Matthew, 7:5)

Maybe someone should introduce the Catholic Church to the teachings of Jesus…

How Do Half-Measures Help?

No final bill, yet, I know.  But the more I look at what Congress is doing, the more I fear the net end result is that I’ll be an “outlaw”.  It seems the ONE thing the Congress critters have agree upon is that we need a law that requires people to buy health insurance.

It’s classic wrong-headed thinking.  Our so-called “representatives” seem to believe that people wouldn’t pursue health care unless they’re forced to.  MY problem is that all of my discretionary income is used up on “housing” and “food”…

Think of me as a drowning man, going down for the third time.  I can pay my bills…unless anything goes wrong.  Anything at all.  That includes a shiny new mandate about where I’m legally allowed (or required) to spend my money.  If I pay my PG&E, I can stay warm, forestall pneumonia, and avoid a need for health care.  If I pay my newly minted health care bill, I can’t stay warm.

So, I’ll be warm and take the same chance I’ve been taking for ten years, now.  (Hell, why SHOULDN’T a guy approaching 50 have confidence in continued robust health?  I mean, what could go wrong?)  But here’s where such a law would help: if I DO get sick and go to an emergency room, they’ll have a basis to deny me services: failure to comply with national health care laws…

Apparently, both measures currently include some form of government health insurance.  The Senate lets states “opt out”.  I don’t so much mind the “opt out” bit.  I don’t really think any states will opt out.  Oh, one or two might, just for show, but they’ll “opt right back in” just as soon as their constituents are done with them.  (Remember how all those “red” states who screamed about “stimulus money” nevertheless accepted “stimulus money”?)

It’s looking like the final product will also leave somewhere between 12 and 16 million people without coverage, too.  Oh, and both plans include a “phasing in” process so NONE of this stuff happens now.  Hell, the current House measure won’t be fully implemented until 2019!  Sarah will be nearly finished with her second term by then and righties will have had MORE than enough time to convince Americans “it doesn’t work”.  (And, really, because of these half-measures, it won’t…)

Some people are willing to accept “baby steps” or half-measures.  The concept is the ‘foot-in-the-door’ theory.  “Just get a bill…any bill.  We can tweak it later.”  So the Dems accept nearly any compromise, counting on the “tweak it later” part.  Repugs push for every concession, knowing the weaker the bill is now, the easier it will be to kill later.

Again, I acknowledge there is no final bill yet.  We’ve heard all kinds of scary stories about what it will and won’t do or how such-and-so provision is “dead” only to see it resurrected (or never dead in the first place…)  So it’s best to wait until we see the actual contents of the actual bill Congress sends to Obama’s desk.  But through it all, I can’t help but remember: all they had to do was expand Medicare…

“True Believers” In A Fact-Based World…

Do you ever play video games?  In some games, the programmers include the possibility for the player to create a character.  Commonly, the game establishes a list of attributes important to success in the game and then allows the player to distribute some kind of “attribute points” – for lack of a better name – among the pre-determined categories.  Often, as the game progresses the player acquires more attribute points to add to character attributes.

If someone (with more time than sense) were to collect every character ever created for a given game, that person could easily see groups of players that emphasized a certain attribute.  The odds that the point distribution would be identical among created players is probably pretty low but it would still be possible to discern general strengths and weakness and sort them by group.

On a much more complex level, I think it’s a good way to think of how human beings are created.  We all start out with pretty much the same “categories” and we all start out with a given number of “attribute points” that DNA “distributes” randomly for us.  Then, we can add to various attributes or allow them to wither depending on what we do as people, er, “players”.

It’s important to note that “different” and “better” are not the same thing.  In the game, “Strength” might provide one game experience and “Magic” another but neither is necessarily “better”…they’re just “different”.

It might be beneficial to our society to start sorting people according to their most identifiable, though generalized, group.  This is not about starting some kind of caste system, though.  It’s just an identifier.  It would be helpful for other people to know who belonged in which group.

For example, I’ve long held that the character set that makes a good cop a good cop also makes for a poor choice of spouse.  Now, I’m not ripping on cops.  Our society needs them and I’m glad they’re there.  But good cops are people with high self confidence in their own judgment.  They’re not prone to buy sob stories and they don’t compromise.  They respond to their own determinations and let the courts worry about nuance.

But nuance and compromise are the very core of marriage.  See?  The character set that makes a good cop conflicts with the character set that makes a good spouse.  (Certainly there will be some number of people with “attribute distribution” that allows them to move seamlessly between the two disparate roles, but I think this would be a very small number of people, indeed.)

Knowing one’s own group could help someone avoid mistakes in life.  Knowing someone else’s group could help society direct people into fields in which they could excel and probably enjoy.  The value is two-fold: a kid displaying the attributes of a good cop could be introduced to the idea of police work.  (The child still gets to choose, of course.)   A person seeking an understanding life-partner might know to avoid cops.  Fewer divorces. Conversely, knowing someone’s group could dictate when their input has value and when…not so much…

I recently became aware of an “attribute distribution” that I would never have guessed would exist…but it does.  I call them “true believers”.  We all know one or more.  They gravitate toward fundamentalist religion and/or the neo-conservative movement but the predominant characteristic isn’t so much WHAT they believe.  It’s more THAT they believe…because they believe in spite of available evidence.

True believers have made a decision and seek information that supports their decision.  They disregard information that conflicts with their decision.  Facts and logical thought are unimportant – detriments, even – to their preferred position.  Now, let me be clear.  I’m not talking about intelligence or capability.  There are certainly plenty of true believers who are incredibly intelligent and/or talented.

But since these people have no use for fact-based information that doesn’t serve them directly, there’s no way to debate them.  There’s no benefit to discussion with them.  There’s no way to improve their understanding of issues facing the nation.  They already know what they know and they will not – sometimes forcefully will not – update what they “know” based on mere “facts”.

I’m not saying these people have no value, at all, in any field.  But governing a nation requires the ability to make actual life-affecting decisions based upon actual events, viewed in the context of testable reality.  When you want to figure out how to get to the moon, you bring in people strong in math and science.  When you want a new hit movie, you bring in people strong in language skills.  When you need to govern a nation, you bring in the pragmatic, not the true believers.

True believers are uniquely unqualified for the role.  Yes, of course, they have a right to their opinions.  Of course, they have a right to express those opinions.  But the rest of us have an obligation to sort of pat them on the head, thank them for their input, then ignore them and go about the business of improving society.

To be sure, they won’t understand.  They can’t.  But we, the people, are currently sifting through the wreckage of “governance by true belief”.  It’s time to return government to a fact-based institution operating in a fact-based world…

Start A Tax or Start A Church…

I have to confess: I’m a little jealous of the business model of churches.  I know, they got in early so they got the really plum model, the one all businesses have been trying to re-create ever since.  Still, they’ve got it pretty sweet…

People voluntarily stop by the retail outlets (aka, “church”) once a week to make another payment on the installment plan in an effort to acquire a “product” the church never has to actually produce (immortality).

How much does their product cost?  They never say, at least not in absolute terms but 10% seems to be the going rate.  Now, that’s 10% of the gross, not the net and don’t cheat!  (God will know.  He knows everything…)

Man, what a great racket…

Even better, it’s common for churches to try and get their front-line employees to take a vow of poverty.  Just imagine owning a business in which the employees ask you to pay them as little as possible.  Think of what that does for the bottom line.

Sweet…

Still, I don’t think it’s “business model envy” that leads me to the position that it’s time Americans reconsider our stance on taxing churches.  Now, I’m only talking about property tax, here.  Churches like to pretend they use the donations collected to do “good works” around the world.  But they keep a lot of that money.

I’m ok with letting churches write-off what they don’t keep, that is, whatever actually gets used for “good works”.  It’s not the attack on religion it may seem.  It’s more like “holding them accountable”.  If you collect money on the premise that you’re going to do “good works” and then buy a shiny golden calf…er…cross with Jesus hanging on it (or any other kind of idol…) well, you’ve sort of collected money under false pretenses, haven’t you?

The state could use the money the churches are hoarding and even JESUS said, “Grant unto Caesar that which is Caesars”…

…failing that, I’d like to announce the formation of my brand new church, The Church of Universal Understanding!  The “understanding” of course, is that you send the Church of Universal Understanding – me – money.  I’ll use it for “good works”.  Well, most of it.  Ok a lot of it.  Well, some, for sure.  Er…define “good works”.

Don’t I need someplace to minister to my flock?  Shouldn’t it be someplace that glorifies the Lord?  I mean, you can’t ask the Holy Father to sit his Holy Butt on an unheated toilet seat, can you?  More, I’ve heard He really gets into a “smiting” mood if He’s asked to wash His Holy Hands under anything less than solid gold fixtures.

So, please…keep sending those tax-free donations.  The very moment my new, 32,000 square foot Palace-that-Glorifies-the-Lord-but-I-get-to-live-in  is complete, we can get some really “good works” done…

A Doctrine of Fairness…

I had occasion a couple of weeks ago to write about the Fairness Doctrine and why I think the country would benefit from its reinstatement.  The column got me into a couple of debates.  Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement.  One guy thought really, really hard, wiped the spittle from his mouth and gave me a carefully considered, “Go away”.  (Ok.  Hey, clever response…)

THIS guy, though, really did try honestly to refute my position in an intelligent way.  I mean, he tried.  He seemed to have a bit of difficulty staying on point, though.  The Fairness Doctrine applies to only a limited sector of the overall media environment; broadcast media over the public airwaves.  His response touched on nearly everything but…

I said “nearly everything but…”  He tried to brush aside the “broadcast media” part with an assertion that so many frequencies are available these days it would be difficult to make a case that scarcity of outlets could lead to widespread misinformation among the populace.  And yet, the populace remains wildly misinformed, largely because of a lack of opposing information in public broadcast media.

Sadly, he also restated the old saw that broadcast television news is “liberal” and then asserted that, secretly, liberals really only want to get rid of Rush, et al.  As his piece-de-resistance, he then repeated the canard that perhaps I’m just afraid of the free exchange of “ideas”.  None of that is correct, of course.

I actually prefer allowing blowhards like Rush and Bill-o the Clown to blather all they want.  I’ve always supported, for example, letting the neo-nazi’s march and allowing the “white supremacist” movements to have their say, as well.  (I guess it’s clear by the groups I chose as exemplars I consider the neo-con positions false, stupid, and dangerous to society…)  I honestly believe that the more people understand just how incredibly stupid those positions are, the less attractive they become.

But my position doesn’t hold up if only the neo-nazis are allowed to march with no opposing message offered or available.  Worse, if only the neo-nazis are allowed to march and they march every day, without refutation sooner or later many people could well come to believe the drivel they spew and THAT is my objection.

Mr. Case pretends conservative talk radio has been so successful because people want to listen to conservative talk radio.  In his mind, the fact that moneyed interests have bought up huge swaths of radio stations and then programmed those stations with only conservative talkers seems irrelevant, even when those stations operate at a loss.  (Fox “news”, for example, has operated at a loss for most of its existance…)

Propaganda works.  We’ve seen it over and over and over again, throughout history and it’s working right now in this country.  It may be true that the Fairness Doctrine would prove insufficient to stem the tide of misleading and outright false information being spewed 24/7.  But I still think we should try and find myself wondering why, if the conservative position is so sound, they should fear a rule requiring actual balance…

It’s The Abuse, Stupid…

This is from the BBC.  It’s the first and last paragraph from the article, ‘Gates blocks abuse photos release’, dated 15 November, 2009.

“The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has blocked the publication of further images of US soldiers abusing foreign detainees…

…He said then that the release of such images would be “of no benefit” and might inflame opinion against the US.”

Gee, ya think? It’s too bad the Empire is unable to produce photos of the “detainees” being treated well and in accordance with US and international law…

Gates is mired in this classic “rightie” thinking, though.  See, it’s not the abuse that causes the problems.  It’s the photos of the abuse.  Personally?  I would have preferred to live in a country that believed in it’s own principals enough simply to live them and trust the example to be inviting to others…

A Place To Shove Their Wedge…

I’m anti-abortion.  No, that’s not right, I support a woman’s right to choose.  But if I were in charge, I’d work hard to eliminate abortions.  No, not by law.  That’s just stupid and really kind of vicious toward the poorest members of our society.  Instead, I’d use attrition.  That is, I’d just render abortions unnecessary.  (I know, there will always be a need for the procedure for various reasons but the fewer the better, right?)

Always-wrong righties like to pretend liberals are out there getting pregnant just so they can go and enjoy an abortion.  Of course, that’s ridiculous but, hey, they’re always wrong.  For instance, they oppose comprehensive sex education – preferring the abortion-inducing “abstinence only” – AND they decry attempts to make birth control universal.  See?  Wrong and wrong.

In fact, those are exactly the tools I would use to minimize abortions.  Teach kids how their bodies work.  Start when they’re young…REALLY young.  Try to get ‘em before they begin to awaken, sexually, and teach them where babies come from (and how they got there in the first place).  For the record, I’m talking about the mechanics of human sexuality, not the specific details of, say, a really quality oral encounter…

Then, make sure various birth control options are available through the universal, single-payer health program our Congress critters finally devise…

Yeah, it’s a dream.  Righties would FREAK OUT if they thought their children were being taught factual information (about…anything, really).  They’d become apoplectic at the idea young people had ready-access to birth control.  And, of course, I’ll be AMAZED if the current “health care reform” movement renders anything more than a law requiring all Americans to purchase private health insurance…

Sure, you could use all the information and statistics that demonstrate how much more often unwanted pregnancies occur in “red” states than “blue” states or you could just pull out the comparisons between abstinence-only “education” versus comprehensive (including abstinence) education.  But in keeping with the “Always-Wrong Rightie Rule”, the simple fact that righties oppose such an idea proves it’s the correct course of action…

The reason I mention this today is that I’m afraid the righties have found their wedge issue in the health care “reform” debate.

“Ahhhhh”, righties scream, “no Federal funds for abortions.  Ahhhhh!”  (righties scream a lot…)

For their part, Dems seem to be buckling under right on schedule.  I know, there’s no “final” bill, yet, and really we should ALL wait to see what actually ends up in one.  But since both sides seem to agree fucking with the poorest of the poor is the best course of action, I’m concerned.

Look, if Paris Hilton wants an abortion, she can get one.  Ditto with “the pill”.  It doesn’t matter what the law of this land is, she can go to some land where she can get the medical services she desires.  You can continue waaaaaaay down the economic scale with women across the land able to access family planning/abortion services in various ways.  But you get to a point where there simply are no resources for such services.  THESE are the people righties condemn to delivering babies they can’t afford, then condemn further for becoming welfare mothers.  (Good god, could it be THAT simple?  Hey righties, abortion saves you money!)

“Ahhhhh”, scream the righties.  “Ahhhhh, Ahhhhh, Ahhhhh!”  (Righties scream a lot…)

The “Always-Wrong Rightie Rule”…

“There never has been a state that has benefited from an extended war.”       – Sun Tzu, ‘The Art of War’

Sun-Tzu, what does he know?  Why, the US has been fighting two wars for nearly a decade, now, and clearly there hasn’t been one single damaging affect anywhere anyone looks…ever.  C’mon, who doesn’t like blasting big boulders into sand, right?  And why wouldn’t you want to prop up the corrupt government of a nation deeply mired in the 7th century?  And after all, empires can withstand anything, right?  Certainly no empire could ever be brought low by any extended war, especially in Afghanistan.  Didn’t the Soviet Union prove that?

It turns out, though, that when one fights a war, one must pay for the war fought.  Yet every single cent spent on military equipment is destroyed.  It creates no value, leaves nothing of value behind.  It’s waste, pure and simple.  Oh, and almost as an afterthought, there are people involved in this as well, right?

I suppose with the American economy humming along as sweetly as it is right now we can afford a little waste but what if the economy hits a hiccup?  (What?  Really?  Depression, huh? 20% unemployment?)  In breaking news: apparently, the Empire currently has very little left to waste…

But President Obama is trying to decide how much longer he wants to continue evil george’s mistakes, apparently ignoring Sun-Tzu.  Ok, fine.  Who needs Sun-Tzu, after all, when one has the “Always-Wrong Rightie Rule”? The “Always-Wrong Rightie Rule” is an axiom that states that righties are always wrong.  Since this is the case, one can simply do the opposite of anything a rightie suggests and the outcome is nearly guaranteed to be the best answer for the largest number of people.  (It works frighteningly well…)

In this case, righties want Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan.  One needs no other indicator that sending more troops is exactly the wrong thing to do…

Carly Fiorina is running for Senator against Barbra Boxer.  She’s running on her credentials as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard.   (Take your time, read that last sentence again…)

Carly Fiorina undermined and destabilized one of the state’s most stable companies, nearly single-handedly and in opposition to input and objections from those around her.  She was forced out only after she managed to poise HP on the brink of disaster.  Now she wants to “bring that experience” to the Senate.

It’s false that government should be run like a business in any case.  But even if it were true, it shouldn’t be run like she ran a business…