Is Healthcare a Right?

On a recent car ride I made a voice note of my thoughts about healthcare as a right and posted it on YouTube with a transcription to hopefully make it more discernible.

Link to YouTube

Here is the transcript if you would prefer to read it:

Driving home from Santa Barbara to LA and on the freeway I see, once I get near LA , a big plume of smoke and I know it’s a fire. You see them occasionally but you know what it is. It is a fire. Might be a grass fire might be a home might be a business. But am I worried? No. There is a whole team of people who are waiting for this kind of thing to happen and are responding to it on my behalf in some ways. I mean I don’t live in LA but I’m driving through it. It might impede my passage. I’m part of it. On behalf of all of us these people are dealing with that fire. What is fire? It is this innocuous really indescribable thing. It doesn’t have substance but we have teams of people whose sole job is to combat that thing on behalf of us all. It is a tremendous demonstration of the cooperative project that we are all involved in and that is making this thing called life, another indescribable entity, thing, there’s no substance to it, life, but that is our project. We are doing it together! We can’t do it alone. It has been demonstrated. I don’t think that anyone could seriously posit that a human could survive on their own in the wild like a lot of animals do. We have to get together to perpetuate. No one (could say otherwise). Maybe someone could. I would be interested to hear the argument. I don’t think it is possible. So we get together. That has been our formula for success is we collaborate and take care of the things that threaten us. And we get together and we take care of certain needs. That we have to fulfill them or to make them go away such as hunger or shelter. That is all collaborative. We rely on each other, which means everyone, to solve those issues; food, shelter...

Healthcare is another one of those things and that is why some people call it a right but they don’t say we have a right to food or shelter. Some people do. Not really commonly accepted right now in 2016 that people have a right to that. There is definitely a segment of the population (saying that) but health care we are hearing people allude to it as a right. And I don’t know if I buy that. I don't know that I buy that as a right. I really see health care as an obligation.

I think it should be a single payer, us collectively, the government …

So, the government as a single payer is us, all of us, collaboratively paying for this thing to happen. I do think that we have an obligation to do that for each other. Just like we have an obligation to put out fires and protect and serve, the police, things like that. In that way it is a fundamental ... I wouldn’t call it a right. I think it is part of what we owe to each other. Rights are things that are given to you, I don’t know how to describe it but god is close. There are inalienable rights given to us by our creator, I think is a good way of putting it, that precede, a priori, government. We give government power, I do believe that, so our rights come before the government. We create the government in order to form a more perfect union. That is how it is described in our Constitution; that wonderful document. That is our project. To create a more perfect union. Notice it doesn’t say the first union. It says a more perfect union. Which means it recognizes that we are already involved in this collaborative project and the reason that government is being established is there is another layer that we are putting on top of that collaborative project in order to make it more perfect. Perfect being a euphemism. Obviously nothing could ever be perfect but "more perfect" insinuating that it could be better. So that is what we are attempting to do and in order to do that we, collectively, are going to create an environment that is conducive to that and health care is part of that. 

And the fact that we can provide healthcare? That we have gotten to such a level this is something we can provide? I mean governments back a couple hundred years ago at the very least, sure we could ask them to provide healthcare but there was not much they could provide at that time compared to what can be provided at this time. So the fact that we can provide healthcare comes from this collaborative project. It would have never come out of any solo... it hasn’t... there are so many facets to it. It has come out of this collective project. So it belongs to the collective. I know this sounds like a socialist or communist statement. I’m not going there. I’m saying it came from our collective project so it is something that we could give because it is ours and there are benefits to giving it. It makes our union more perfect. It makes our citizens better able to perform their duties as citizens and as a consumer. Our citizens have certain roles that we need them to play in order for our union to be more perfect. Citizen, consumer are a couple of them and healthcare enables them to do that. So why not provide it as best we can as cheaply as we can?

Certainly people deserve to get paid for this service and that is why I don’t call it a right because we are asking other people to perform this service so it is really an obligation. There are people who love doing it and are good at doing it and we need them to do it. They deserve to get paid to do it absolutely. It is a vital function. But at the same time it has to be cost effective in order for it to be ultimately successful in aiding our more perfect union.  So how do you keep the cost down? Frankly my answer to that is that you take the profit motive out of it. I know that sounds communist/socialist as well but I’m not advocating taking the profit motive out of everything. Hardly! I believe in the profit motive. It is a tremendous engine for growth but in this instance it is counterproductive. So that is what government can do for us. It can take the profit motive out of providing a resource that enables our citizens to become better able to serve in the role that we need them to serve in because this is a collaborative project. 

Why is the profit motive counterproductive to healthcare? Obviously it increases the cost but my argument is by the nature of healthcare it disproportionately increases the cost because profit motive is a tremendous growth engine in the free market (which is another area we need our citizens to be stewards playing roles in) purchasing, that decision is the fuel of the profit motive [sic] engine but in the instance of healthcare you can’t make a decision, a rational decision, a free market decision, you can’t make that kind of decision in the arena of healthcare. Your supply and demand are way out of whack because your life is precious and you don’t have the option of saying no. That is really what the key to free market growth profit center - is the consumer has to say no. That is our group decision on what is valuable and what is not and consumers can’t say no to healthcare. They don’t have that option. So it does not work in the free market profit mode and it is costing us. It is something that is taking resources away from things that we could better apply those resources to. I’m talking about money. Certainly we need to figure out the best way to provide healthcare. It is possible to screw that up and be counterproductive by not providing enough incentive for service and development. We definitely need to maintain a level of that. Growth and change are absolutely imperative. We can’t stagnate. We have to bring good people in by offering a living wage or some other incentive. When I say a living wage I mean something competitive. It may be a stipend, a guarantee in retirement. It doesn’t have to be a wage. As a society we can say “you are valuable”, “we will take care of you”, “there may be certain things you can rely on if you make this commitment to help us out”, there’s options. That we have to do, we have to do it right. But still, it can’t be based on free market decisions and process because it is not applicable. You can’t say no.

Inauguration of a new era.

Approaching the election of 2016 I had the sense that the Trump campaign would prevail. I had a lot of friends who didn’t give it a chance in hell but I was getting the sense from my social media feeds, some of my other social settings and the news sources I was tuned to, that there was a significant segment who were supportive of him and there was another segment that was totally disenchanted with the Clinton campaign. My worst fear was that this combination of factors would produce a victory for, what I considered, a truly abominable candidate.  I was actually in the Trump camp at one point. I remember a conversation in September of 2015, with some people I barely knew, where I actually spoke the words “I would like to see a Trump presidency”. I was one of those who was disgusted with politics and thought that Trump might actually stir things up. I knew that he was touting some absurd policies but I wrote that off as theater and felt that he was playing the game well. I believed his continued success would force him to the center, like it had all previous candidates, and that he may just go the exceedingly functional route to address those in the center just like Ross Perot had. I followed the campaign avidly, as I had all previous Presidential races, and with every passing week my support for Trump decreased. I had given him the benefit of the doubt that he was an intelligent person on some levels. After all he had built an empire of sorts. Could a buffoon really do that? Each absurd statement and publicity stunt indicated to me that he did not have any real intelligence but was just the inheritor of wealth and used that to secure himself a spot in that echelon. For me the final straw was his “2nd Amendment people” speech in the early summer of 2016. It was clear to me that his insinuation was that gun zealots assassinate Hillary Clinton despite the contorted disputations of him and his minions that gun zealots were being called to exercise their political power. It was apparent that he had zero sense of decorum and absolutely no comprehension of the intricacies of politics. He could not be trusted with the ultimate power our president was granted. I posted a rare political Facebook statement raising the red flag and was somewhat dismayed to find that my sense of outrage was not widely shared. There were a few who shared my sense that this had crossed a line but this was not the fatal blow to his campaign that I felt it should be. It was just another blip on the radar. I watched in horror over the next several months while the campaign ebbed and flowed for him but the Democrats were never able to deliver the knockout punch but instead repeatedly undermined their own campaign. By the time the election arrived I could only put my faith in the humanity of the electorate of the United States that they would not allow such a travesty to ascend to the ultimate seat of authority. On Election Day I checked my phone at 7pm Pacific Time as I was on my way home and saw that there were several red states on the board to only a few blue and I knew then that it was over. If Trump was not repudiated by Middle America the election was his. And by 10pm it was clear that he had won. My initial thought was that there was a dark underside to my country, larger than I had even expected, who voted him in to office to reaffirm their gloomy world view. It wasn’t until a couple days later that I finally saw the statistic that showed me my fears were even worse than I had imagined. On some political talk show analyzing the unexpected results of the election a graphic went on screen and exposed that Trump had gotten roughly the same number of votes that Romney and McCain had gotten in their losing effort.  Clinton had gotten several million fewer votes than Obama and third parties did not account for the difference. So the truth of the matter was not that there was a larger dark side to my country than I originally had expected but that the moderate voters who had embraced Obama’s message of hope and change had simply let Trump win because Hillary just wasn’t sexy enough for them. Granted the Clinton campaign did an abysmal job of reaching out to those voters but still the presidential campaign does have consequences and millions of people failed to see the significance and let the worst of our country prevail rather than holding their nose and doing what was right. My team was lame.

This perspective affected me greatly in the weeks following the election and I could not share my compatriots’ outrage at the result. He did not do anything extraordinary. This was a colossal failure by the left. Nothing more. Even as talk of Russian interference increased I could not put any stock in that. Trump got the same number of votes as Romney and McCain and they lost! The blame for this situation lay at our feet. No one else.  As the inauguration approached I was similarly jaded. Some of my closest friends were talking about the demonstration that was being planned for the day after the inauguration and I was still uninspired. First of all it was being largely referred to as a protest. This seemed to me a strange reaction and I could not discount the Trump proponents who characterized the reaction of the left as essentially a tantrum. There was simply no evidence of anything nefarious. This was simply a bungle on an epic scale. The Democratic Party couldn’t even defeat a clown! If anything needed to be protested it was ourselves. Secondly, I had seen protests like this before and found them to be initially uplifting but ultimately impotent if not counterproductive to real change.

Still the consequences of this election were becoming decidedly real with Trump’s cabinet appointees and I had to ask myself what I was going to do. My initial reaction was to flee. I couldn’t picture myself in a society that would allow this to happen. But on serious reflection I had to admit that I hadn’t done my part at this moment and I did have a deep attachment to my country and the ideals I thought it was founded on so I needed to step up. I have been similarly stirred to a sense of action in the past. I was in the camp that saw the Iran-Contra affair as the ultimate abuse of power. One that, if allowed to go unpunished, would spell the end of the foundation of our society. Again I was somewhat surprised that others did not share my outrage but there was a movement of sorts and there were some repercussions, of sorts, so it all played out in a way that didn’t totally discourage me. It did leave a bad taste in my mouth. At the same time I was trying to reconcile the inanity of the drug war and was firmly convinced that it was all based on corporate profit. The government was acting as an agent of the pharmaceutical companies to ensure their profits over others. Not for the good of the country. Similarly, it seemed to me that the pursuit of nuclear technology was suicide by another name. I volunteered for organizations that lobbied against the nuclear arms race and was baffled that this issue was on the periphery of social discourse. I was very active in the counter culture, traveling with a band that was overtly critical of the current government. The community seemed strong to me at that time. There was a large group of like-minded people and benefit concerts were too numerous if anything. Live Aid had convinced too many people that concerts could change the world. We got Bill Clinton elected and things seemed to be moving in the right direction. But Bill was fatally flawed and I believe the morass he got himself in to ultimately pulled him more towards the right than was necessary in order to appease his detractors. Ending Welfare, bombing, NAFTA … It all started to seem like more of the same. By the time George W. Bush got elected my mind was jelly. I just could not get my head around how things had gone so sideways. I had taken every political science course at the City College and maintained a deep reading list of domestic and foreign affairs even though I was only marginally involved in the counter culture which seemed to me at that time largely impotent and ineffectual. I was haunted by Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”. Particularly the part where he talks about how the powers that be actually benefit from the appearance of dissent and the counter culture served that purpose to a tee. As long as nothing ever changed “they” were able to point to us and say “We are not tyrants. There are dissenters!” I was determined to find a path toward change. Not merely dissent. When the invasion of Iraq was announced I was again stimulated to make my voice heard. I traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the march against the Iraq war. It was a brutally cold day but still 100,000 people showed up and I was invigorated to know that I was not alone in my dissent. I was disappointed to find that I was alone in my desire to change things. All I heard there was dissent. A lot of “NO!”  Very little “This is the alternative”. 

The reelection of George W. was a major breaking point for me. I had volunteered for the Kerry campaign and it seemed quite obvious to me who was the best choice for the job even though Kerry didn’t present himself very well in that contest. I was finally convinced that there was absolutely no logic nor reason in the political process and that it was largely controlled by forces that were hidden and, from what I could glean, much more powerful than I could possibly combat on my own. By this time I had gotten myself in to main stream America and found that the creature comforts provided by the corporatocracy far outweighed any emoluments that integrity and grace and nobility could provide. I was originally in the McCain camp in 2008. I liked Barack Obama. I thought he was a good speaker but I thought he was too green and that he would be easily out gamed at politics and ultimately his failure would tar the left. When McCain announced Palin as his running mate I had to reconsider everything and voted for Obama with trepidation. As the economy collapsed months before the election I was convinced that it was an intentional act. That “they” were going to saddle him with an intractable crisis and they would let it dissolve for four years so that they could come to the rescue. “They” could survive for four years and the whole "create a crisis so you can provide the solution" ploy had been demonstrably proven as their modus operandi for 500 years or more. Now, despite the fact that President Obama outwitted them for the most part, we can see that they are still following that script, because that has been their modus operandi too, decrying the carnage of America during the Obama administration. Stick to the script. The rise of Donald Trump seems off script too so, in that way, it provides a glimpse of hope that things can change. 

So, now, I’m watching the current events with an eye towards whether there are the sufficient components for change still unsure what that change might actually be. One of my core beliefs is that a few essential mindsets need to change. Part of my frustration with the dissenters has always been this prevailing attitude that we just need to beat them at their game. Well what kind of victory would that be? We would be the owners of the spoils we disdained. No. What needed to change was the game. Not the winners. The entire game. Their game is acquiring and domination. Fear and hate are their tactics for winning that game. My game is providing and cooperation and my tactics are peace and love. Yes I came up in the reggae scene but I ended up there because it corroborated my belief that it was the best way to achieve a more perfect union not for any sentimental reason and not because they changed my point of view from some previous held position. I had come to the peace and love conclusion from reading Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Locke, Rousseau, Plato... The list goes on. The western philosophical tradition is all about peace and love. So as the Trump dissenters began to foment I didn’t see much of a change on the horizon. It all sounded like fear and hate to me. I planned for the long haul. I had seen what peaking too early could do. The enormous outpouring at the initial moment of inspiration dissolves rapidly as it is impossible to sustain a full sprint for much longer than a couple hundred yards. I knew that real change was hard work that required real sacrifice and that marching through the streets with other like-minded dissenters was too easy and ultimately served the powers that be, not our cause. What I would have liked to have seen was a national strike, something that had real impact. A party on Saturday is nothing more than a dalliance. 

Ultimately though, what really needs to happen is the dissenters need to do the hard work. Run for office. Get elected. Make tough choices. Show through action and policy that love and peace can provide a more perfect union than the politics of greed. Maybe this could be the spark to make that happen. I watched. I eagerly tuned in. And I was pleasantly surprised to see Naomi Klein talk about making the Democrats better and not losing site of the mistakes that were made. And to hear Josh Fox talk about the water protectors at Standing Rock employing love of their adversaries not because it was easy but because it was necessary and that this was the true revolution at hand. And to hear Van Jones talk about how love means being honest with your adversary as well as yourself and holding them and yourself accountable to what is right. And all the talk of intersectionality and its implications that we are all one. And to hear Kamala Harris point out that although it is convenient to frame the current issues as women’s issues that distinction is ultimately specious. The critical issues on the table apply to people. All people. Even “them”. They are people too. And as soon as we lose sight of that we have lost.

"Without path from protest to power, the women's march will end up like Occupy"