Why do you believe what you believe, concerning your position on health care?

I'm not following you; health is a condition, not a political construct.

Are you saying healthCARE should be a right?

So what? How does this make any difference?

I choose to not disagree, because it doesn't make any difference if you define it as a right or a privilege or a religion or a color. Defining it as a right simply means that the gov't cannot legally deny you the right to pursue whatever healthcare you might want. It doesn't mean they have any obligation to provide it. Nowhere in the preamble or the bill of rights is it listed that the gov't will give you the substance of these rights, but will only protect your own ability to pursue those rights...i.e. to own a gun, say what you want, be free from unreasonable search and seizure...to name a few.

Just because it doesn't explicity state in the Constitution that "health care is an unalienable right", up there with "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", one can extrapolate that one cannot have, "life, liberty and pursue happiness", if one has a health condition that costs thousands of dollars to treat, or one loses their life savings, home, etc, to pay for the right to just live.

I don't think that our Founding Fathers would have wanted the American people to suffer the way we are, due to the strains that health care, or lack thereof, is causing this country. If it could have been foreseen by them, I truly believe that it would have been included in the Constitution. I also truly believe that if they were alive today they would be appalled at the excuses that some "Americans" think is their God Given right to deprive their fellow citizens of health care in the name of the American culture and what is best for the American people. JMHO and my $0.02.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN
Spokane, Washington

Just because it doesn't explicity state in the Constitution that "health care is an unalienable right", up there with "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", one can extrapolate that one cannot have, "life, liberty and pursue happiness", if one has a health condition that costs thousands of dollars to treat, or one loses their life savings, home, etc, to pay for the right to just live.

I don't think that our Founding Fathers would have wanted the American people to suffer the way we are, due to the strains that health care, or lack thereof, is causing this country. If it could have been foreseen by them, I truly believe that it would have been included in the Constitution. I also truly believe that if they were alive today they would be appalled at the excuses that some "Americans" think is their God Given right to deprive their fellow citizens of health care in the name of the American culture and what is best for the American people. JMHO and my $0.02.

I was born in the UK in 1972, had little to do with health care beyond general examinations and childhood shots right up until I was pregnant at age 23.

We had the NHS, so along with a police force and fire dept, I believed the ambulance service followed up with health care was part of a right, not a privilege. After all, if you call 911 then two of the life saving services come from tax payers in the United States of America and the third does not. This does not correspond with any other modern industrialized nation - any other nation in the "first world" has all three covered by taxes.

I left the UK in 1999 two years after Tony Blairs disasterous New Labour government had taken over.

When I first came to the USA after two months due to my husbands job I had no health insurance but it didn't matter because nothing happened. He was still covered by military benefits but nothing happened to him either. I was the first to get a job in the USA and I had free family coverage, it cost the company about $550 then in 1999 for coverage and we were paying nothing. Great.

Fast forward to now and I am paying $500 out of pocket every month for a healthy 37 year old and a healthy 14 year old without any pre existing conditions. My employers are paying $440 as well. So, $940 for two healthy people who no doubt, if they ever "chose" to become unhealthy they would drop in a heartbeat. I've seen people at my place of work be fired because of cancer or other long term illnesses. Of course, the official reason isn't their cancer but their being five minutes late to work or "unreliability". Coupling health care insurance with their work place is absolutely a hideous act of humanity because once a person is no longer able to work, guess what - they find any excuse whatsoever to get rid of that person from their payroll.

I thought the measure of a society was how they treated their weakest members - this is how GW Bush talked when he was talking about embryonic research. It isn't happening in the United States of America as their weakest members can go stuff them selves and die.

I've yet to see a Canadian beat their chests and say "We're the best nation in the World! Never forget what it MEANS to be A CANADIAN" in cyberspace. But they do have it far better than the USA as a society, and if they're not beating up on third world nations to prove it - good for them. What they do have is a sense of humanity in that they believe the guy that serves them those Mickey D sandwiches also deserves to go the hospital if they get struck down by swine flu too without having to go into bankrupcy.

1)Media attention. Did (or does) the media play a role in your positions?
2)Personal Experience. Maybe you had a family member that was treated unfairly by the insurance companies, or, another poster might have had a loved one that they felt was treated unfairly by the VA or Medicare.
3)Scholarly research. What criteria do you used to ensure that it is indeed a credible source, and how heavy does it way on your decision making regarding your position?

i think a persons health should be a right, not a privelege...