Ultimately it comes down to whether we want healthcare treated as a right or a privilege. If it's a privilege, then I suppose we can leave things pretty much the way they are. People who can afford healthcare will have it, and people who can't afford it will just have to make do the best they can. If it's a right, then obviously we have to make some changes.
That is where the whole thing boils down too. Right or Priviledge or what this really is about are negative rights verses positive rights, Isiah Berlin's
Two Concepts of Liberty. Free Speech is a negative liberty as it requires nothing from anyone in order for you to exercise that right. All one need do is open their mouth, move their lips and the right expresses itself. No burden or demand is exerted or required of anyone else for you to exercise that right.
But we are also a mixed bag society in that we do have pillars of positive rights and one such case is the right to an attorney and if one can not be afforded, one will be provided. Now you're not going to get Perry Mason unless Mr. Mason is willing to do Pro Bono work but the point is, this is a positive right or you could call it a priviledge. As an aside, I've love to discuss sometime the reason for this "priviledge" in the first place but this thread is not the time nor place obviously.
Techgrrl was right when she said the present system is unsustainable but the present system was built and designed by the very same special interests that are now in the process of formulating the new system being debated. Should we therefore have reason to expect a better outcome or should we expect those self serving interests to come out the other side even in a better position than they are now?
And let us not forget that when someone is granted a priviledge verses a negative right, there are
consequences and potential victims that are not seen or realized but yet in making such a system, that priviledge becomes a means of various corp. special interests to profit by maintaining a controlled and narrow marketplace that prohibits both product offering and marketplace entry by upstarts seeking to meet market demands.
To ignore this is to learn the hard way in time the perils of authorterianism as this will come into play to protect those interests that have risen to leadership status. Even the present plan is more about weeding out smaller competitors and strenghtening market position of the big players than it is about providing coverage and it will use State powers to protect it's claim window as they have always done. Don't fear President Change's death panel, fear the one's coming from the State created private cartel!
This deal is no different than the secret meeting to create the Federal Reserve, Hillary's secret healthcare meeting, Cheney's secret energy meeting, last year's secret meetings to bail out Wall Street and now President Transparency joins the fray with his own scheme. Do we see a trend here when it comes to major shifts in our society?
It's all a big CON!
Liberty is the solution of all social and economic questions.
Joseph Labadie
