The title says it all. The venerable U.S. Constitution was the beginning of our form of government. It is the social contract/compact that cannot be violated. It guarantees certain rights, and they are not all in the Bill of Rights. The Preamble promises a more perfect union (a work in progress) to promote the General Welfare. Health Care is a right.
How did the operators of our economic system of private, capitalist enterprise begin to think it could interbreed with, take over, commandeer health care? The capitalist entrepreneur is a microbe which invades every aspect of life in the U.S. It’s their second nature. BUT!!!!
Capitalistic entrepreneurship applied to health care has a deleterious effect on something so fundamentally and personally precious as health care, and becomes a parasite on the system we are forced to have. Nothing operates without good health. NOTHING! It’s the big stopper. Bad health brings everything down, defeats all. Health care is more a public utility than a capitalistic concern. There is nothing more central to our democracy. Absolutely NOTHING.
The British system of health care puts a premium on Preventive Medicine, as a direct result of being so dedicated to the public welfare provided in their laws. Testimony to that fact is in the number of publications on preventive medicine originating in England. Those doctors have a personal interest in reducing the number of people in their waiting rooms. In our nation, the doctors have a personal interest in keeping their waiting rooms crowded. Does preventive medicine become a minor issue here? That’s a pregnant question.
The dedication of health-care givers should be expected to rise above the profit motive and to do things that may not be profitable in terms of monitary payoff. Remember the service of the old-times family doctor who made house calls? I do.
Our Congress is considering re-forming the health care system because so many people are excluded for monetary/jobless causes. The best care goes to the wealthy in a for-profit system. Doctors get wealthy through individual payers and the private insurance system. “General Welfare” health care does not have a seat at the table, witness the hearings where the voices of the “General Welfare”, single-payer health care alternative were handcuffed and escorted out under arrest.
The name-calling by opponents, to wit, “Socialized Medicine”, can be effective among people who do not know that Medicare is made possible as a product of a “socialized-medicine” initiative, which I would call “General Welfare” health care under the entitlement implied in the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution.
IN POINT OF FACT, the “general Welfare” statement may be construed, by me, if not Constitutional scholars, to allow, or even to require a “socializing” of several aspects of life in the United States. I take that statement, “promote the general Welfare”, very, very seriously. I capitalize the word “General”. The writers and signers of the Constitution were socializing their vision of what they wanted these States United to be and become.
BOTTOM LINE
I think and believe that all business would have greater prosperity with health care removed from its responsibilities, and transferred to a single payer, the government of all the people, the federal government, under its responsibility for “the general Welfare”. In the Medicare style. CONGRESS: Shut up and get cracking! DO IT!
