To this dayTo this eveTo the fulfillment of your dreamTo the content of your characterTo hopeTo changeTo visionTo audacityTo equalityTo selflessnessTo unity
To fairnessTo respectTo idealismTo realismTo coverage for allTo access for allTo more doctors for more accessTo the Patient-Centered Primary Care CollaborativeTo the Physicians’ FoundationTo healers of every specialty and every groupTo the sick in need of careTo affordable careTo health care savingsTo clinical information systemsTo workable clinical computersTo more preventionTo personal responsibilityTo the right foodsTo more exerciseTo no smokingTo less obesity and diabetesTo less chronic diseaseTo better outcomesTo comprehensive careTo coordinated careTo top-down dispensationTo bottom-up innovationTo patient responsibilityTo doctor accountabilityTo financial transparencyTo multicultural fluencyTo freedom to choseTo freedom to payTo free exercise of judgmentTo revamped Medicare doctor payTo decent Medicaid reimbursementTo malpractice reformTo MD to MD cooperationTo clinical collaborationTo respect for marketsTo less intrusive governmentTo feasible individualismTo reasonable collectivismTo less regulations and hasslesTo fewer unneeded frazzlesTo a sustainable health systemTo the end of free lunchesTo economic recoveryTo the futureTo 2009To doing the right thingTo knowing what the right thing isTo celebrating what counts mostTo you and your familyTo your healthTo the health of the nation.
Categories: Uncategorized
Health care is a right as stated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and confirmed by most other civilized nations.
It seems that you are afraid of the consequences of declaring health a human right but are blind to the bankruptcy of our current ‘personal responsibility’ health care system.
The US as a whole spends more than twice any other country on ‘personal responsibility’ health care but suffers the worst health of all industrialized advanced countries (and even a few poorer countries such as Cuba).
Our profit oriented personal responsibility health care system is bankrupting the country. Individually, each of us is only one serious illness away from personal bankruptcy. (Actually, those in our ‘socialized’ Medicare system are protected from this bad outcome.)
We are all entitled to a better health care system. One that is oriented to providing basic human rights rather than ensuring profits for pharma, insurance, hospitals, etc.
The events of the last eight years have proven that unregulated capitalism does not work. We need to face up the fact that the government must provide services and regulation where the private sector has been an abysmal failure. This means regulated universal health care as a right… and yes, it may mean that you may make less profit in health care. This is a good thing for all of us. You will not starve and I will not mourn the excessive profits of the health care industry.
By “INTERpersonal responsibility,” I am assumming you mean we are our brother’s keeper. That is true, bu the entitlement syndrome has its limits. Health care as a “right” sounds good, but unchecked, it is the road to national bankruptcy.
“To personal responsibility”
Yeah, because dropping dead because you can’t afford a decent diet, nor the attention of a medical professional, but you refuse to ask for government help because everyone will call you a lazy parasite, that’s SO irresponsible.
Two words I’d like not to see together for a year. Just a year. How about INTERpersonal responsibility?