How to Get Universal Health Care

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they believe in giving Americans universal health care. I don’t believe them. Anyone who takes the time to understand universal health care should conclude that only a simple single payer system will reform the current outrageous system that benefits the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

The contorted plans from Clinton and Obama are not sufficient reforms. And what John McCain has proposed is sheer nonsense and by itself should cause any conscious American to avoid voting for him.

Fights for health care system reform are centered in Congress, as if legislators will do what they have never done before: achieve true, major and systemic reforms that only serve the public interest, not lobbyists and campaign contributors from business sectors.

Both Clinton and Obama believe that Americans have a moral right to universal health care. If this is correct and if this is what you believe, then achieving universal health care that covers absolutely everyone by making health care affordable to absolutely everyone, as it is in many other nations, requires a different kind of government action. What exactly?

We must expand the Bill of Rights as embodied in the US Constitution to include the right to affordable universal health care. The time has come for the public to conclude that the right to universal health care is as important and necessary as the right to free speech and all the other beloved constitutional rights. Common sense says that health care is a right, not a privilege.

After all, what good are our current constitutional rights if you are ill or dying prematurely because of a lack of good health insurance? Certainly the pursuit of happiness cannot be successful when individuals are suffering from poor health because of inadequate health care.

Why would sensible, caring Americans be against a constitutional right to universal health care? Are there people who would stand up and publicly condemn the right of all Americans to have first rate health care? The only ones I can imagine doing this are those now benefitting financially from the current unjust system, those blocking necessary congressional actions.

What Obama and Clinton should explicitly and loudly advocate is a constitutional amendment that makes universal health care a nonnegotiable right of all Americans.

Why has no member of Congress submitted legislation to get Congress to propose such an amendment for ratification by the states? Clearly, the only rational answer are the many business interests that have corrupted Congress and that benefit from the current system. The Constitution provides an alternative.

Article V provides an option never used in the entire history of the US, because Congress has refused to obey the Constitution and respect state requests. The Article V convention option was put in the Constitution because the Founders and Framers believed that one day Americans would lose trust and confidence in the federal government. With 81 percent of Americans believing the nation is on the wrong track and with so many millions of Americans lacking good health insurance and care, that day has surely arrived. And with abysmally low levels of confidence in Congress and the president, an Article V convention – a temporary fourth branch of the federal government – is clearly the right path to obtaining a universal health care amendment. A convention of state delegates could debate such an amendment and if they agreed to propose it, then the standard ratification by three-quarters of the states would still be necessary.

Yes, this would probably take a few years. But it would be worth it. The prospect of Congress, even with Clinton or Obama as president, achieving universal health care without business-friendly loopholes faster than the amendment approach is not good. The process of pursuing such an amendment, moreover, would help keep pressure on Congress to do the right thing.

If this sounds reasonable and necessary, then learn the truth about the Article V option at www.foavc.org and start talking up a universal health care amendment that Hillary and Obama should support.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through www.delusionaldemocracy.com; he is a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention.]

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Our delusional democracy breeds delusional prosperity.

.......Thanks......

Healthcare is a made up problem. The system is fine, and there is probably something wrong with you if you don't have the healthcare you need.

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My enduring personal, original quote: Many mistake what should rightly be called "passivism" for pacifism. Pacifism and passivism are COMPLETELY different.
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Ronald Reagan was not the only one to suffer from Alzheimer's Disease. America did, too.
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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." --President George W. Bush.
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Los Angeles voters=dumber than rocks.

Getting universal health care is simple.... move.

If you believe health care is a right and should be provided by the government, immigrate to England or Canada or France or any of the other socialist-ran countries that offer it.

See? Problem solved.

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^^What TH said. Socialized healthcare is total garbage in every single country that has it already. So I don't understand the logic, if the system fails every time someone else tries it... then what the point of following the lemmings?

Furthermore your avatar is laughable since it has an American flag and make an attempt to say we aren't a democracy, well guess what? It's right, we aren't and were never meant to be.

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The chief problem with the OP is that most Americans benifit from the system as it is. Currently 16% of Americans are without healthcare. They would certainly benifit from the change. And some other percentage would be better off having their healthcare subsidized.

But still most are better off with things as they are. Making an Article V situation a likely no go.

At least for now. I occasionally see statistics like

Nearly 40 percent of the uninsured population reside in households that earn $50,000 or more.1 A growing number of middle-income families cannot afford health insurance payments even when coverage is offered by their employers.
http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml

As numbers like that crop up public opinion will shift.

However even McCain is not blissfully ignoring that fact. And his plan may keep the majority of Americans happy with our current healthcare model.

I like our current system. People who don't have insurance can always go to an emergency room for treatment. The hospitals in turn, pass these expenses on to the government and insurance companies. The government passes these expenses on to the taxpayers and the insurance companies pass these expenses on in the form of higher rates.

Why would we want to subsidize someone's insurance when we can spend more money this way?

Because this way the government doesn't get involved and send us down the same road as the europeans and canadians who've fallen for the socialized medicine line.. I don't mind paying the difference for emergency care. What I do care abuot is having to wait in line for standard medical procedures and people dying on waiting list for transplants.

Here's a fun story that shows exactly why social medicine is a terrible idea.
Link

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I mind. I'd much rather subsidize someone's private insurance than to pay higher taxes and insurance premiums.

But oh wait... it wouldn't be private anymore, duh! So you'd rather pay for ALL of their health care instead of just the emergency stuff, and you fail to address the other issues with socialized medicine which makes any further discussion moot.

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