Health Care

While the country continues to move to some form of universal health care, you continue to hear fear mongers and well to do conservatives decry the reform as a form of socialism or even sometimes communism.

One of the things that a society needs to decide is what exactly does each participant get in return for abiding by the societal rules. If you consider modern society, each member of the society does their part by following rules, paying taxes, and participating in our representative government. Our basic national documents state that each individual has certain inalienable rights. One of these is the right to life.

Now, as health care has progressed, we have seen life expectancy expand. However, clearly access to care and especially preventive care is of utmost importance to such life expectancy. A significant number of our fellow citizens do not have access to this care. The dividing line is not simply between rich and poor. Oddly, the poor tend to have access via Government programs already. Those who don't have this care tend to be our lower middle class citizens or in some instances our blue collar workforce who are not employed by major corporations.

We have evolved into a system where health care and employment or wealth are linked. Now, if there is some justification for why an employee at an auto manufacturer, or other large corporation should get better health care than a construction worker or day laborer I would be curious as to what it is.

Often I hear analysts claim that Americans with health care are happy with it and don't want to see changes. Of course, that is similar to saying people who have anything of value are happy with it. The question that Americans have to answer is do they want to deny their fellows the same care? Another question to ask is do they want to leave their future access to care up to chance that they will remain employed?

The current state of health care is simply unfair and expensive. If you are wealthy or secure in your employment, you are one of the haves. Whether you are there because you are deserving or lucky is really irrelevant. We need, as a society, to extend health care to all.