Privilege or Right?

If there's one thing that everyone can agree on it's that healthcare is expensive. Unfortunately that's about all we can agree on. As I listened to the 2009 - 2010 health reform 'debate' and the many ripples that it spawned I kept coming back to the same question: Is healthcare a right or a privilege? This seems to be the real heart of the matter, at least for those not associated with an insurance or pharmaceutical company. That's really what we're debating isn't it?

On the liberal/progressive side are those who see this as a basic rights issue. They believe that access to medical care should be something all Americans can count on, no matter their financial status. On the conservative end of the spectrum it seems to be viewed as more of a luxury and that access should be something you must work for and earn. Now conservatives won't put it that way exactly, but that's really the unspoken truth behind all the careful prose. They want to sound like they care, but in the end they always seem to rely on going to the Emergency Room as the fallback position. As if that's some sort of cost cutting measure, which it most certainly is not. That just pushes the cost around, out of sight, till it's paid for by all of us in one shape or form.

I'm sure it's obvious where I stand in this debate. For me it comes down to a simple question of whether a person's lifespan and basic health should rest solely on the size of their paycheck. Is a subcontracting carpenter less worthy of a long, healthy life simply because his job doesn't afford him health insurance and he may or may not be able to afford a policy on his own? Is a network administrator's life more important because his job usually provides health insurance? And even if you remove the employer subsidized insurance from the equation, a net admin makes more than most carpenters, so he would be much more likely to be able to afford insurance on his own. Put it this way, the CEO of Goldman Sachs will never want for medical care, no matter what ailment he may suffer from. However a single mom working multiple part time jobs to make ends meet will have difficulty paying for treatment of a simple broken bone, much less something like cancer. So is the CEO more deserving of life than the single mom because he has a high paying job with top of the line health insurance?

We in America like to think we have the best medical care the world has to offer. And, in part, that may be true, based on how many of the world's great and powerful come here for treatment. But it's important to remember that medical care and health care are two completely different things. Medical care is the actual skill of the medical staff, the technology they wield and their ability to apply both to cure a condition or manage it for the best quality of life. Medical care is not concerned with cost, only results. Health care on the other hand is all about cost. Health care is exclusively focused on how much medical care you are allowed by your insurance and/or your personal finances. So America may indeed have stellar medical care, but that doesn't mean all Americans are in a position to actually benefit from it.

And that's where the rubber meets the road on this issue, isn't it? Stop blathering about 'death panels' and socialism. Strip away the histrionics, the hyperbole and the euphemisms and admit what this is really all about! Is a person's life only as valuable as his paycheck?

Terminology

For the love of [insert appropriate deity here]! I am so sick of hearing the word Liberal used as a synonym for Lunatic or Idiot! Have we really gotten to the point where we are redefining legitimate terms simply to insult each other?  This is one of those things that seems to be far more of a Conservative thing, I've noticed. Every time a Conservative politician or pundit uses the word Liberal, it's spit out as a slur. Often phrased with disgust or contempt. As if the target of the remark were some raving luntic. The term 'Liberal' has been slowly hammered into purely a negative. Why?

Liberal:  (From the New Oxford American Dictionary)
• Open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values
• Favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms
• (in a political context) Favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform

This is the definition of Liberal. Sounds positively evil, doesn't it? Practically Communist, right? Sure, some people take it to the extreme, but no more so than Conservative extremists.

Lets be honest here, without Liberals, America would be a much more backward place. Whether they used the term to describe themselves at the time or not, who do you think spearheaded the abolition of Slavery? Liberals. Women's right to vote? Liberals. Civil Rights? Liberals. It's the progressives among us who push beyond tradition and what's considered 'natural' to do what is right. I'm sure some will try and pull out the nugget that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and therefore a conservative. But the various political parties have changed a lot over America's history, so you can't say that Republicans of the 1860s had the same party philosophy as those today. Conservatives by their very nature, support the status quo. They support tradition. Don't rock the boat.

I'm not saying that every Liberal idea or movement is great. Like all philosophies, you can take it too far.  You can get too lost in ideals and lose touch with the realities of life and human behavior. And that is the whole point. Both Conservatives and Liberals need each other! The Liberals push us to step outside our little, safe boxes and reach for more. Conservatives are the sea anchor that keeps the dreamers from racing off into a philosophical fog. Yet the current Conservative movement, in particular, seems determined to demonize anything with even a whiff of Liberalism about it. As if anyone who is not a Republican is, by definition, an ultra left-wing wackjob. Believe me, if the hard core Conservatives ever got what they keep screaming about, the majority of them would regret it soon after. As the wise saying goes, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!