Basic Human Rights

I'm presently at odds with my daughter, Shelley, about the new health care plan proposed in the United States. I believe strongly that the only way each and every citizen can receive equal health care is if their country adopts socialized medicine. Shelley believes that the existing plans through insurance companies need only to be overhauled...but that doesn't take care of the uninsured or underinsured in the United States.

On her Facebook page, she asks the question, "is health insurance a basic human right" and the obvious answer is that, yes, every single person on this earth should have access to equal health care. Logically, not every country is wealthy enough to supply decent health care to all of it's citizens but the leading countries on this planet (the United States is one of them) should be bound by decency to insure that every one of it's citizens have EQUAL access to health care, education, food, and shelter.

Welfare was created to make sure no-one need starve or live out in the open so why are some Americans so afraid of socialized medicine? Education is another socialized plan created to make sure all children, regardless of financial ability, receive a basic education. Right now, an indigent person can't go to a family doctor but has to cram the hospital emergency rooms to access basic health care. Either that or they just ignore their poor health until it's too late.

Part of every working person's taxes goes to support the welfare of those less fortunate. Should it stop at providing full health care for the needy? Should rich and greedy insurance companies have the power to gouge their clients and then dump them when their health care reaches a certain limit? Should a working person making minimum wage be unable to afford health care?

Socialized medicine will insure that all citizens have the basic human right to health care. Everyone will have the right to see a doctor when necessary and no-one will have to choose between feeding their family or tending to their health.

Then there is the question of illegal aliens and whether or not they should receive the same care as legal citizens. Emergency care should be available to everyone because that is the decent, human thing to do. Anything beyond emergency care should be the responsibility of the patient's home country.

This blog is about health care but I do wonder at how the United States (and probably Canada, for all I know) allows illegal aliens to attend their schools. Somehow this must be allowed so that unscrupulous businesses can employ the parents at slave wages.

This can be a cruel, cold world but Obama has been a strong enough president to make it a little kinder and that gives us all hope for a better world.