SIDE THOUGHT - Is Healthcare Not a Basic Right?
Isn't healthcare as basic as public education? As public roads and highways? Parks? Clean water?
People are denied care due to their lack of ability to pay. So the very poor go to the emergency room because they cannot be turned away in the emergency rooms. The hospitals have to foot the bill - many hospitals are going out of business. They then raise the cost of healthcare some more. For a healthy childbirth, I was billed $20,000! How can anyone with no insurance pay for that?
Employers are being crippled by the large cost of their employee's healthcare coverage. So they pass on the costs to the employers and the employees end up paying $100-$1000+ a month for healthcare coverage which some of them cannot afford to pay. Even that, they are afraid to lose their jobs or quit because they do not want to lose the health coverage.
Some parents work 2-3 part-time jobs so they have no health coverage. They have to decided when their child have a fever in the middle of the night - should they just wait for the public healthcare center to open the next day, go to the emergency room, or give their child some more fever reducer and hope for the best?
So I ask again - isn't healthcare a basic right as a citizen of the US?
8 comments:
I play $325 a month for our insurance and I still have co-pays!!!!! There's gotta be a better way!
I totally agree. My husband is a hard working dad and I'm a part time working mom. His job doesn't offer health insurance and neither does mine. We are good people who work hard and I definitely think we deserve health care.
Mom tu-tu, your situation is an exellent example! We have to make insurance an important issue in the upcoming elections!
I cannot imagine what it must be like to worry about the cost of taking your child to see the doctor. It is one of a few things I have never understood about the US.
I know our government (Canada) is pretty screwed up, but at least we have free healthcare.
Not just doctor visit concerns, prescription medicine is a whole other topic!!
No.
When you make something a right, you obligate every else to provide it for you.
There isn't a health care tree that we need only shake to deliver free, excellent health care for all. It will be paid for but every last one of us.
Government health care means no-competition health care. If you like the way the DMV is run, or the IRS, or any other state monopoly, then you'll like the government hospital.
I have no health insurance, so I'm not coming from an "I've got mine!" attitude. But if you think it out, food could be a right. That means my neighbors are obligated to feed me, no matter what. Clothes could be a right. Education could be a right. Shelter could be a right. Paid vacations could be a right.
It turns into slavery.
I think it is better that we all work to provide for ourselves, and the providers compete to give us the best product for our money.
Marie, thanks for your comments!
To me, the question still remains, what if the parents cannot afford healthcare - what do they do? They work jobs but the companies they work for do not offer healthcare coverage. We provide public education, public highways, food stamps, etc. Why not healthcare? Or should we take away public highways and free education?
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