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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Legal Definitions

("Sharp Questions in Court on Health Care Mandate")

Central to the 3 day play that is now taking place is the morality behind it. Hidden behind the legal complexities and the definitions is the question of who we are as a nation. There are 50 million of us who are left without the most basic of human rights. Circumstance has created an unfathomable concept that it is appropriate to abandon those in need.

In the halls of Congress there has been fierce debate over the question of our responsibilities. There are those on the right who clearly try to shape our laws to protect the privileged. And when, as here, they have been unable to stop the passage of legislation that conflicted with their vision, they have taken to the courts to do the dirty work for them.

While the arguments are heard seriatim over jurisdiction, regulation by compulsion and severance, what is really the thrust of this challenge goes largely unsaid. This debate is not in the final analysis about terminology and nuance but about defining ourselves.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why didn't we just call for tax to pay for universal or enhanced medical care? The govt pays part of Medicare, and the member pays a monthly amount. Medicare works, it just needs to be more efficient in expenditures, like Rx drugs.
We have a great system, why did Obama feel the need to reinvent the wheel?

Robert said...

What great system is that? The one with exorbitant premiums, denial of coverage under the policies as standard protocol, and 50 million people left without any insurance? Or is it the single payer system under medicare and medicaid? I would suggest (as many do) that what "Obama" did was not nearly enough to fix a system that is so fundamentally broken.

Anonymous said...

We already have the right system.It's called Medicare and it is single payer and it works just fine! I would hope that was what Pres Obama would have liked but he was dealing with an intransigent Congress and had to settle for what he could get. Now we see where it got us.

H

Robert said...

I agree 100%. For all those I know who are recipients of Medicare, there is nothing but praise. Yes, we have to address ways to improve billing and payment procedures, determine which treatments are most effective and work on ways to reign in costs, but let's start with a program that is effective and modify what we can, rather than starting with a broken model and tweaking it.