So after all that you still didn't have the collective guts necessary to advocate universal health care?
If a country's deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, then forget about what Trump is proposing, what are the values reflected by the United States appalling history on health care up to this point?
Writing from a country that realised the necessity of universal health care in 1972, it has been terrifying to watch the health care debate unfold in the United States since I started studying American politics at university in 1976.
This is the point about domestic American politics that Americans seem to either not understand or simply ignore - if this is how you treat each other, what can the rest of us expect ? Are we surprised you bomb innocent civilians in Iraq when you allow tens of millions of your own people to live in fear of a serious disease?
On this issue, at least, we have finally seen some progress as Obamacare had the desired effect of making the fundamental inevitability of universal health care in a civilised country apparent to at least some political candidates on the national stage. I believe universal health care is now inevitable in America - it's just a question of how long it's going to take.
Here is my set advice to any political candidate or activist running for office in Trump's America. You only need one slogan to capture the support of all decent Americans, "Love Each Other". Hopefully they're a majority.
58
Yes, but not at the same level that I receive.
5
They have the right to work for whatever they want.
Money is fungible. In a free society we all make choices....
10
Our political base plays on one of the deadliest sins "Envy" to ignore the other sin "Greed" to justify an irresponsible attitude that seeks to deny care while providing relief to big corporations and servitude to those most desperately in need. This is the new conservative mantra willing to bail out their own actions and inactions with tax cuts while laying the unseen burden of debt on those most vulnerable.
36
As much as I hate to say this, I don't feel bad for them.
Well, let me be more precise. I feel bad for the poor Americans who voted for Democrats in 2016. They voted for a right to sane healthcare prices, and they didn't get it.
I don't, however, feel bad for the poor Americans who voted for Republicans in 2016 who don't have access to cheap healthcare. They voted for a president / party who promised to get rid of ObamaCare, who never once floated viable alternatives and -- surprise! -- have been deliberately sabotaging ObamaCare without providing anything to replace it. Certain poor Americans voted for this, and for a president who promised to be mean to brown people, and they can have that.
Meanwhile I'll enjoy my upper-middle-class job with nice healthcare benefits and enough disposable income to donate to poor Democrats while waiting for Democrats to return to power. At worst, I'll move to Canada.
41
This is one of the most upsetting and disgusting discussions that I have ever read in my life. This is where unbridled capitalism takes us - into the immoral question of not just what a life is worth but indicating that we should put a price on it and decide as of what point in your life the money (capital) has run out for your care. When a society comes to that point, then it is no longer a civilization. That is why so many are now turning to other ideas, like social democracy. I have lived in five countries and speak 10 languages. I follow the news online all over the world. NEVER have I ever read such immoral thoughts in any other country or language. The USA is really in a sad and sorry place if this is the kind of discussions you carry out.
73
“Can anyone remember being taught in a high school or college civics (government) class where the teacher/professor said it was a function of government to provide for the individuals’ needs and wants?” - Thomas Robley Burnett, May 06, 2017
7
The ACA, ("ObamaCare"), stinks. The Republican pseudo-plan stinks even worse.
Here is MikeCare, it almost doesn't stink:
You know how the government pays to provide us with universal necessities like cops, education, libraries, road construction and repair, fire departments, snow removal, defense, garbage removal and the like? That's what we need in regard to medical care to make sure that everyone in the country, regardless of wealth or income, is covered. Just like with the other services it should be paid for using the taxes which we pay.
Go to whatever doctor you want, you pay a deductible to discourage frivolous medical visits, and the medical providers get paid according to a reasonable government schedule that is tailored to region. Medical providers who do not want to accept what the government is paying can do so by posting a notice in their offices to that effect. You either pay the difference or go elsewhere.
And that's the end of it. Welcome to the 21st Century!
If it makes the prez feel any better we can call it "Trumpcare".
Representatives, get this through your heads, THIS is what We the People want. Anything less than this is no good and antiquated, if not criminal. We need and expect better from our elected representatives who work for us and get paid by us.
33
Imagining the consequences of the GOP's drive to cut "social services" programs to nearly zero, I see those with money being driven from their gated communities past hoards of starving, sick peasants to reach their private jets or exclusive destinations. This is nothing like the inspiringly democratic, egalitarian values of the country of my birth.
30
Famous poem: No Man Is An Island!
15
In answer to the question your headline poses: YES.
In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, there is literally no excuse for things to be otherwise.
I really wish Michael Moore would do a sequel to "Sicko." That film, more than anything else I have read or seen, did a marvelous job of pointing out the depravity of our current system.
"SON OF SICKO" -- where are you when we need you?
24
The GOP are only interested in how people can be exploited to make money. Anyone who can't be used to further enrich the 1% are Lebensunwertes Leben. Just another of the many characteristics they seem to share with the group who originally used that phrase.
21
Not till disaster becomes a partner in the lives of small minded haters they won’t change.
Three thousand children are missing maybe we should take away the health care of the people who are in charge of this disaster.
Apparently these small minds just thought these kids could just disappear and no one would notice.
These people can’t be in charge of anyone’s else’s medical lives or anything else. Where is that database they were crowing about. I guess Facebook was to busy getting money from the Russians to assist with finding three thousand children .
We are to hateful and it comes back up hunt these politicians however cancer ,dememtia don’t care what your party affiliation is.
13
It should but it isn't.
1
This opinion piece states " The country’s deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens" and asks the following question about Republican efforts to essentially gut Medicaid and leave the poor to fend for themselves: "Is this how America is going to be?"
Absolutely. As long as Republicans are in power.
There is no point again asking this question, or any variation of it. 'Repeal and Replace' Obamacare was always nothing more than an 8 year slogan, replaced in fact by "Repeal and Sabotage." The Republican controlled Robert's Court signed the beginning of Medicaid's end when it gratuitously made Medicaid expansion "optional", allowing Republican governors to deny health care to millions. It did the same for Obamacare, holding it constitutional as a tax, thus subject to reconciliation and a mere majority repeal. Republican cuts to CHIP and SNAP show there are no bounds to Republican malice being visited upon even the children of America's hardworking poor and struggling.
The Republican Party is a stage four cancer on the American people and America's Democracy, which, absent the Republicans losing the House or Senate, has but four months to live. A Republican loss in the next election may not even matter, given who Trump's next Supreme Court nominee will be.
19
If as a country we lack the wealth to insure that all legal residents to medical care then we need a new definition for great or drop the pretense all together. If there is another pretext for that inability all me to point out the Nazi regime in Germany did not start mass murder with its Jewish citizens. That slippery slope started by deeming the mentally and physical impaired as a burden to society unworthy of state support and they were among the first victims.
25
Well, if poor people don't deserve health care, should rich folks like Donald, our Senators and Congress people, and Supreme Court Justices deserve it. Or does their wealth and power make them better than the rest of us working slobs?
How does Donald deserve any salary or benefits from the taxes we pay year after year when he spends his time Twitting and tearing children away from their parents. His shtick may have been a bit amusing in the beginning, but now he's just a pathetic old man who wants us to believe that he knows what he's doing. Well, most of us with our eyes and ears open know what he's doing. It's all a scam. He doesn't care a bit about us; it's all been about HIM!
22
Medicare has saved the health and life of a few of my friends. You would not think that they had other than traditional health insurance to look at them: well dressed, working, educated. But, at the time unable to afford insurance, with part-time "gigs", they did get help.
This enabled one to deliver a baby safely and to get care for both of them.
I can't believe that some people think that health care is a consumer good. Health care implies a respect for life and care for others. It's beginning to seem that our country respects neither.
22
It simply comes down to this:
White America would rather rip the social safety net out from under themselves than see a black or brown 'lazy, incompetent, freeloading' person receive governmental aid.
And the GOP are all too happy to feed the hate.
Enjoy your lower corporate taxes and stock buybacks America!
33
One can think of health care as a "right", but perhaps it is better thought of as something that benefits us all. The person in good health (or restored to good health) is able to work to provide for herself and her family, or at least be less of a burden, a worry, a heartache for family, friends, and society.
Health care for all is in short something that promotes social stability, family ties, and a peaceful society--all purported to be "conservative" values.
For society, it's cheaper to pay for health care--or at least it would be in a not-for-profit system--than it is to pay for bankruptcies, crime, family breakups, foster care, and the all of the attendant suffering and destabilizing results of untreated ill-health.
22
Do poor people have a right to health care?
Of course they do. We all have a right to health care. And if we're in reasonable health we also have the responsibility to make a contribution of some sort to the society providing that health care. Aside from the fact that for-profit insurance is one of the stupidest excuse for "health care" that I can imagine, I think this balance between right and responsibility is where we're getting in to trouble when we discuss the issue of health care.
I know far too many people who earn their health insurance as part of their salary at work. It's not "employer-provided" as insurance is so often deceptively described in government missives. The phrase employer-provided health insurance suggests some sort of gift, yet workers are EARNING every penny of that premium themselves. The irony is that many of these insurance plans have $5,000 deductibles so the workers who work so hard to get health insurance can't actually afford to get health care. Employed people earn their insurance that costs thousand of dollars yet still can't afford actual health care. What a screwed up system. The question isn't do poor people have a right; its do WE have a right - all of us - to health CARE.
16
They don’t seem to have a right to decent food and shelter, nor the right for a decent education, or to have the right to vote freely. They don’t have the right to equal justice before the law. So, health care? Why is this right different from all other rights?
11
The moral panic around "free" healthcare underlines the importance of universality. Healthcare isn't considered charity in other countries because everyone uses the same system.
19
Right, and those nations rely on us for their military security. We can't pay for it all. Even in medicine alone, Canadians come on down when they want quicker medical treatment or surgery or scans. In that sense we subsidize their system. Most other Western democracies pay far less for their prescription drugs than Americans do, and it is our extra payments that support the R&D from which that all the others benefit. This is hardly a zero-sum comparison.
8
And plenty of Americans head up to Canada (or ask traveling friends) to get the life-saving medicines they need but can’t afford in the US because prices are not regulated at all. Just think of the EpiPen debacle.
34
Just an idea: place everyone on the same health plan as their representatives in congress. To pay for it simply end all corporate welfare, repatriate (and tax) all offshore investments and reduce military spending.
29
Done right, a healthier nation is a more competitive and prosperous nation. Everyone should have guaranteed access to the full range of care for preventive and treatment services.
For-profit insurance companies have yet to prove they add value to healthcare as opposed to shareholders. Single payer will probably prove the way to go.
Universal healthcare is a no-brainer and we should get it done as soon as sanity returns to Washington.
18
Maybe the better question is whether corporations have a right to use people up and/or destroy people's lives when they can't be "used" any longer. Knowingly or not, all human beings walk around, live around, and are touched by the negative effects of the products corporations have sold, are selling, for billions upon billions in profits while actively pursuing less regulation, less organization for workers, and less taxes to pay for public goods. Whether you want to choose mining slag in your drinking water, passive consumption of cigarette smoke or factory sludge, or Teflon in your bloodstream we are the products Americans, and other stockholders, make their money off of. So if our labor is demanded to survive in this economy and consumed throughout our adult lives why wouldn't we have a right to Health Care. It seems to me the only question is why aren't corporations paying bigger taxes to pay for better healthcare instead of less and less? If we let corporations, and those who own them and get paid to facilitate their political interests, have the status of "personhood" then why shouldn't they have the responsibility of paying for their consequences--human genetic alterations or environmental outcomes? Single payer healthcare simply means, largely, cleaning up the mess our money-making machines have made over the last century. It serves as an escape pod for corporations.
13
Corporations don't have any more "personhood" than unions do, Jane.
We work for them; they pay us; they don't exist to sell their products; we become unemployed. Not enough tax money is collected when large segments of the population are unemployed, and they also become a drain on the benefits programs. Where does all this largesse come from f not the tax-payer? No one makes you purchase cigarettes or teflon cooking utensils, and plenty of diseases have nothing to do with either of those.
"So if our labor is demanded to survive in this economy and consumed throughout our adult lives why wouldn't we have a right to Health Care."
The "right"? What is a "right"? What is the source of these "rights" that some of our citizens demand?
Some say we each have an equal right to the product of the labor of all--or at least the right to as much of it as we need." From each," they say, "according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Isn't that fairness personified?
The catch, it seems, has always been in the first part: getting people to work hard for others. The USSR was a land of hopelessness and poverty when they tried this, and our poor were richer than their average citizen. Indeed, I have often wondered how many kings of old would have traded all their finery, jewels, and cold castles for the kind of health advances, creature comforts (air conditioning, heat, running water, toilets and showers, air travel, television, that our poor enjoy every single day.)
7
I have long that there is confusion in this country about government benefits of every kind.
That is: many people say they're 'against' benefits, and that people should have to 'work' for benefits--this reflects the paradox stated in this article, in its concluding paragraphs.
Every single American should get, every year, a tally from the government of the 'benefits' that they and their family are receiving.
Pell grants, food stamps, educational help and loans, the list goes on and on. For some families who are 'against' handouts, their lives would be severely curtailed or even endangered by cutting these 'handouts.'
And candidates running against those who run on 'cutting government waste' and so on should make very clear tallies in their television ads of what those cuts will mean, directly, to local families.
It is terrible that the people who are perhaps most endangered in real ways (either by cuts in medical insurance and support, by tariffs that will impact their own ability to make a living, etc.) by the Trump regime (I use the word advisedly) are the ones who support it.
11
Until the Constitution is amended to state in clear language that Congress has no right to deprive citizens of health care or that some percentage of the GDP must be allocated to health care, no, poor people do not have a right to health care. Nobody has a right, even to education in this country. Parents are legally bound to educate their children but how that is done is up to the parents. We have the right to bear arms but there is nothing in our nation's Constitution to require health care that I have to pay for your health care. Now we are in a pay as you go system. You want to get well, well, you pay.
5
Well, we live in a capitalist economic system. The products of human labor in capitalism take the social form of commodities. Commodities are a unity of use value and exchange value. Use value refers to the characteristics that make it usable to satisfy human needs and wants, for example health care. Exchange value refers to the quantitative worth of the commodity or the amount of money for which it is exchanged. Exchange value is the most important aspect of the commodity for capitalist producers, e.g., health care providers. Unfortunately, one of the implications of exchange value's importance for them is that if you don't have the money, you don't receive the commodity.
Therefore, in capitalism health care is not a human right. It's a commodity like other, e.g., food, housing, clothing and if you don't have the money to purchase the commodity, you don't receive it.
If you don't like this conclusion, then you don't like capitalism. That's exactly where I am.
13
Do poor people have a right to health care? Even if the Editorial Board were simply taking a public opinion poll, this seems like a poor way to frame the issue. A better question to ask is, Does a wealthy nation have a duty to provide quality healthcare for its poorest citizens? And most people would answer, Yes, definitely.
So the debate becomes how to provide such care in the most economical, practical, least wasteful, and fairest way. And that's a question that our nation's political leaders, healthcare providers, economists, public policy experts, and voters seem unable to agree on. As a result, extreme, rancorous, all-or-nothing demands dominate the discussion, imperil the social contract, and prevent a pragmatic solution.
9
What is the definition of "poor"? Maybe the question should be "do people gaming the system that could work and don't, or CAN afford cigarettes and booze yet "can't afford healthcare" expect others to pay their way?" I for one work too hard and already make enough sacrifices supporting others to continue to prop up people that elect not to help themselves.
14
Right on.
4
This editorial is an indication that The Times Editorial Board does not understand what Medicaid is. When Medicaid first came about, it was a stop gap form of federal health insurance that would tide the insured (often a poor person) over until the insured could secure a job that included a reasonable level of benefits.
The current employment environment indicates that there are more job openings than there are people to fill these positions. We ought to coordinate training efforts to fill these new jobs with temporary health insurance for the insured until the insured is back on her/his feet.
When people are on Medicaid for more than ca. two (2) years, this is at great cost to the overall economy. Employers like me are obliged to remit both income and payroll taxes that form the financial foundation of Medicaid.
My concern of mine is when we continue to reward those on Medicaid with funds that rightfully ought to be invested first on improved/increased benefits for my employees.
The Times Editorial Board ought to have people on it who recognize the dilemma described in the previous paragraph.
While health is what enables all of us to carry on for another day, health insurance IS EXPENSIVE; especially for those of us who provide it. In closing, why should those who have contributed few tax dollars to the system effectively qualify for "better care" than I can get for my employees?
8
That the question is asked is, of itself, scandalous. Hard to believe in fact. In a super-rich country like the USA health care should be an undeniable right.
14
The fear of being taken advantage that our health care policies and practices reflect is irrational. The proportion of our GDP spent on health care is twice that of any other advanced country. In addition, no other advanced country requires employers to provide health care as a benefit. This reduces capital that can be invested in wealth producing endeavors and can make domestically produced goods and services carry more of the related costs. Universal care is not optional, everyone gets it, but the way we provide it costs us twice as much and serves us less well. It makes no sense until one considers the profound fear of being taken advantage that promotes the miserly attitude causing it.
10
While we debate whether poor people have a right to health care, we should remember in the light of Trump's choices of leaders for the EPA that no American of any income level has a moral obligation to accept a health-damaging increase in pollution, just so the corporations can save money and enhance their profits that way.
19
Neurologists have found that "when a person lives in poverty, the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals and complete tasks in the most efficient ways." In our competitive society such people get pushed aside.
Sociologists have described an "analgesic subculture" where people beaten down by poverty from childhood learn pain relieving behavior more so than goal directed behavior. They can't effectively compete in today's increasingly competitive society. Expecting them to do so is unrealistic. Like who will hire them and keep them on the job?
Some government jobs, with understanding and enlightened supervisors, though, might help these people to learn goal directed and productive behavior, but these people can't be expected to just step in and hold down jobs in a fast moving and highly competitive workplace.
10
Extremely poor framing job by the EB here.
Progressives, liberals, Democrats have been terrible at framing any political issue for the past 5 decades or so.
This wouldn't be so bad except the GOP, Christian conservatives, and others on the right are expert framers.
The result is, the Ps, Ls and Ds are constantly embarking on every debate based on the terms of the conservative framing. In other words, the GOP sets the grounds of nearly every debate.
Further, the Dems usually don't even know it, , , that they've been framed, as it were.
Sad.
4
What is so wrong about bringing up the health care issue in this wealthy country? The main issue is about who gets it and who doesn't. Conservatives choose to believe that those who can't afford health insurance are too lazy or dumb and don't deserve it and "we can't afford to subsidize it.
However, we can write tax laws exempting many very wealthy corporations and individuals from paying taxes that could be used to guarantee health insurance for those unable to afford it. Are you ready for another round of Trump tax cuts to stimulate this moribund economy?
8
The question should be "do poor people have the right to FREE healthcare even if they can work".
7
Do poor people have a right to health care? The rest of the western world has already made this decision.
14
And suffered lower growth rates which means less money for other things such as education (the USA outspends the world...).
1
We're all at risk when it comes to our health and healthcare coverage except for Trump , his cohorts and others who are rolling in dollars. Vote for change if this appals you .
10
My answer to the person who said how do we begin? is this, Love your neighbor as yourself! Not everyone believes in God. I happen to be one that does. It doesn't matter if you are a Christian or not. when you love your neighbor as yourself. you will make sure they are looked after the same as you are etc.
11
I thought that we had advanced, as a people, from the barbarous programs like work houses for the poor. But guess not.
Medicaid and welfare fraud is one matter - but no more so, in my opinion, than FMLA, workers comp and other insurance fraud. But just being poor or ill should not be lumped in the same category, should not be penalized in such a cruel way.
11
A better question...
Do Americans have the right to make paper wealth off investing in Health stocks, even if it drives up cost of health care delivery and threatens access for many others?
Do they???
https://eresearch.fidelity.com/eresearch/markets_sectors/sectors/sectors...
18
Nearly 60% of Americans cannot handle a $500 emergency payment - healthcare, car repair, or whatever. 60%. Let that sink in. That means that the majority of Americans are functionally poor. Yet Repubs cannot figure out why. They want to blame the poor for being "lazy." Yet they should be blaming their own dogma that insists that poor people are poor by choice - Despite the fact that the most reliable indicator of being poor is being born poor, and the most reliable indicator of being rich is being born rich. Instead the Repubs should be looking at financial policies that insure that 1% of the people get 80% of the wealth. Mainly thru ensuring that no one else needs to get any of that - whether thru low pay, no healthcare (so they are sick and cannot work), or lack of education because Repubs refuse to pay for it, etc. And the irony is that Repub policies will hurt their "base" - mostly uneducated whites - the most! Any bets on when that "base" will figure out who is keeping them down?
13
Enacting Medicare for everyone should be at the top of the priority list for this country. Adequate access to essential medical services is a basic requirement for every human being in a modern society. Those who derive some "satisfaction" from the idea of withholding medical attention from all those "undeserving" people should contemplate how much money that ends up costing our economy. Many people with untreated chronic medical conditions are unable to function productively - or at all on a job. Extremely costly medical catastrophes can result from long neglected regular medical interventions. Meanwhile, the for-profit, corporate insurance industry continually refines their product to make it ever more costly and less beneficial to the consumer, so that even the insured forego necessary care with predictably poor long-term consequences. Our businesses are saddled with uncontrollably rising premiums for health insurance that negatively impact their competitive edge in a global economy where every other country has a national healthcare system. How stupid can we be, and how long can we afford to continue being this stupid? Maintaining unjust, unequal and backward healthcare arrangements just so we can be more punitive toward poor people is a very expensive luxury we need to stop paying for.
9
Here's a thought, Why does this administration have to use MYTHS (and lies) to base policy, why not FACTS? This seems to be the modus operandi of this administration.
Yes government-run programs can be clunky and inefficient, but I would trust that inefficiency (if it is based on facts and careful study of an issue) over a healthcare/insurance industry that is in the business of money-making not people-care. We the people don't have any say in any for-profit's decisions on health care they provide, unless we are a shareholder. Yes we can make rules on the for profit health industry but they are in the business of working around the rules.
BTW we need to look at what is the definition of "non-profit" health insurance, since some non-profit CEOs make millions; their salaries are increased at the expense of their members.
For example my daughter is a walking case of pre-existing condition. She has "non-profit" individual insurance and each year the premiums have gone up 25% but available providers have decreased. This led to a $1000 bill because she was not knowledgeable enough in the wily ways of the industry to check that the lab she has used just 3 months previously was no longer in her network.
Meanwhile this non-profit CEO's salary increased 63% and 69.4% in 2014 & 2015. The company lobbied against transparency in healthcare costs and stockpiled $3.4 billion "surplus earnings" due to "market uncertainty" caused by the actions of this administration.
3
Yes poor people do have a right to health care. And one of the questions that Democratic candidates should be asking Republican candidates is why they want to take health care away from poor people. They should be asked why they want to take away Social Security and other retirement benefits, why they want to restrict the right to vote, the right to a solid public education, the benefit of a modern infrastructure, a healthy environment,etc. Why is it ok to trash everything that made us the economic powerhouse we are in order to make the 1% wealthy beyond anything that is healthy for them? Those are simple questions, and the answers are not that complicated either. They should be asked and answered, period.
6
Do not privatize or ask that people "earn" moral imperatives, like healthcare. Everybody has a right to live, everybody has a right to feel comfortable and safe, everybody has a body and a mind to take care of, we all suffer ills, be they mental or physical, severe or mild.
Don't people "earn" to be healthy and comfortable, by struggling everyday at work, school or at home, with family, friends, and strangers; we all struggle together.
What does "earn" mean anyway? It's like one of the words that means something different to everybody, like freedom or liberty.
Also, as the sole issuer of dollars, the United States Government must first issue it's currency to its citizens before they can pay their taxes to the federal government. So, before I can pay my taxes I must receive dollars, whichly originally came from the United States Government. So by that logic, the government first spends then we, the private sector spend. By that logic the government does not need to raise tax revenue in order to spend money. So, we can afford to pay for healthcare for all, the issue is how do we construct it, what are the rules and regulations, that is the discussion we need to have, not whether we can afford it or how we can pay for it.
Check out modern money theory (mmt), it will change how you look at money, deficits and the national debt.
have a wonderful day, you all have "earned" it.
6
I had worked enough quarters (F/T) to be eligible to receive Medicare before becoming permanently disabled just before turning 20. Over the last 28-years my work history covers all sectors: in the private sector (3+ years), for the Feds (7+ years) and with non-profits (~18).
When working with the non-profits, on three occasions serving as an Ameri*CORPS VISTA (Stateside Peace Corps) and Ameri*CORPS State allowed me to "work" (volunteer) F/T (or P/T) for 1-year (or 9-months), earn a monthly stipend and receive a small college grant upon the successful completion of the term.
All the while, this stipend money provided did NOT interfere with the monthly SSD check or my Medicare benefits; nor would it impact the recipients of SSI/Medicaid benefits.
Why this initiative is NOT being promoted is nonsensical. Like Clinton's Welfare-to-Work Program, it helps individuals learn valuable skills working and, quite often, leads to jobs at the non-profit where the individual has been volunteering and/or has developed a network of contacts..
2
There’s no national ambivalence about this. There are normal ethical people and there are sociopathic monsters, i.e., Morlocks.
5
What a pathetic country we have become.....sadistically denying or severely limiting access to basic healthcare services for the poor and working poor, the majority of whom already work, while at the same time and in the same breath, rewarding the richest citizens and corporations with continued enormous tax breaks with taxpayer money.
17
Next they will be jerking Grandma and Grandpa out of nursing homes and putting them to work.
5
That’s actually a true possibility since many skilled nursing facility (“homes” in common parlance) residents are, in fact, on Medicaid.
Medicare pays a limited amount for skilled nursing, after that granny either pays out of pocket or if can’t afford that, goes on Medicaid.
4
Yes. Health care is a basic right. English settlers brought with them syphilis and chicken pox to the American natives, whom Columbus mistakenly called them Indians, decimating them. Health care is embedded in the Preamble of the United States Constitution.
5
Republicans are once again caught red handed hating the mostly urban poor and minorities both in word and deed. American Evangelical Christians, Trumps core supporters, have morphed into some obscenely twisted hate group that prefers to see these people suffer as part of their self-defined god's will to punish them, adumbrating their final destruction in hell. We are such a broken society.
7
Nobody in this world has a right to anything. Having a right to anything presupposes some kind of cosmic, or spiritual, entitlement.
Since the first being attacked another entity for the territory which would ensure the survival of it's kind, a constant battle has ensued regarding "rights".
If we would like to discuss a framework for rising above our basic instincts and eschewing a winner take all, to hell with the less fortunate, pay as you go and pilfer as you want culture we should take a long look at our children and consider the world which we would like them to live in. Or we can just vote republican.
5
Since labor unions have largely been driven out, so has the best chance for universal health care. It is almost impossible to effect change as individuals; we need institutions that will promote the cause of universal health care.
5
Do people close to 65 who've paid into Medicare for 40+ years realize that with a "Medicare for All" program, they'd be required to pay approx. 10% of their retirement income in perpetuity?
I don't want to pay anything extra after I am 65 - or now - because I didn't plan for it and have already paid for my Medicare - I am truly entitled to this because I paid what I was charged.
I would be happy to support those who are truly unable to work, or to work more, through no fault of their own, but without thorough means testing - something that really seems impossible, I feel I am contributing too much and for people who could have made better decisions in planning their lives. I just know too many people who would satisfy a work requirement, but their work is 'yoga teacher,' 'artist,' 'musician' . . . . My work is difficult and not particularly my bliss, but I always felt I needed to pay my own bills (tuition, health insurance, groceries).
I hate to use a Trump-word, but this all seems very 'unfair.'
9
You do know that Medicare part B has a monthly premium of about $104.00. Also Medicare covers 80% of expenses, you pay the remaining 20%. Supplemental insurance can be purchased on the private market.
6
Yes, I do, not wanting to submit an epi-tome, I didn't go into those details. Also, I don't think these supplemental costs changes my argument. I am planning for those, but don't anticipate that the $104/mo. or paying 20% will be more than 10% of my income. Also, with Medicare for All, wouldn't we all (except, again, for those who never planned to financially fund their retirements) have to pay the 20% of costs anyway?
I don't understand your comment.
1
Even our federal courts have concluded that failure to provide most medical care constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Are law-abiding lower-income people less “deserving” of medical care than criminal are, just because they (the law abiding ones) don’t have tons of money?
My read is that if it’s cruel and unusual to deny even a violent criminal adequate health care, then the provision of health care is most certainly a basic human right!
4
That so many people here argue that health care is not a right, in a country that is the wealthiest on the planet ( with the bulk of that money concentrated in the hands of a very very few) says so much about American values. It says that your time is up for claiming any right to respect on the world stage, and to any claim of leadership on literally any issue.
13
Two very different questions:
1) Do poor people have a right to health care in our Constitution?
2) Should poor people have a right to health care?
Two very different answers: No, and Yes. Now it's up to Congress to enact laws that will give them a right to health care. Write your congressman; it is Congress's job to change the law. Don't complain when the courts don't find a right that isn't there.
5
Why would it be so difficult for someone to rip movie tickets 6 hours a week? Or some other menial job?
3
Well, for starters, some people can’t sit up or use their hands or use the cognitive skills involved.
Added to that, as just one example, exactly how many of those jobs are there? Certainly
not a million or more.
11
Stringent monthly reporting requirements are the problem. Any mistake can kick people off the program for a year. Even one month of missing the required hours worked can also kick people off. What if your hours are cut?
5
Some numbers re healthcare spending in the United Capitalist States of America (UCSA) -
"National health spending, includes spending by federal and state governments, the private sector and individuals, has risen from just 5% as a share of the economy in 1960 to 17.9% in 2016, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It's projected to rise to 19.9% by 2025."
How much money is that ?
Trillions.
Health care spending rose 4.3% to $3.3 trillion in 2016, or $10,348 per person. CMS estimates spending will grow 5.4% in 2017 due primarily to faster growth in Medicare and private health insurance spending. It projects 5.9% growth for 2018 and 2019 fueled largely by Medicare and Medicaid".
Stop, read that again, and understand that what is no longer disputed, what you just read, is the result of open-notorious-in-your-face collusion and price fixing by our government, the consortium of national/international corporations, with all branches of the US government, including Executive, Legislative, Judicial, and all of their evil, duly approved by both the House, the Senate, (Congress), and regardless protestations to the contrary, every member of Congress, enables and aides, in one way or another, this historic rape and pillage of the people of America.
In summation, this link will show that single-payer will save billions -
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jul/21/how-expensiv...
9
The fundamental capitalistic foundation of our country dictates the answer. No.
3
The fundamental humanist foundation of our nation’s begs to differ:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...”
Note that LIFE is first and foremost, and even happiness (contentment) is included. I see zero mention of an inalienable right to gouge lower-people for the basic necessities that sustain life.
3
It is perfectly fine to criticize these plans. However, in doing so, it is very important to present the facts accurately. The Times, in its Opinion pieces on the subject, chronically fails to do so.
For example, in this piece, the Times fails to report that Kentucky's plan exempts from work requirements people with disabilities or chronic health conditions: https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2018/05/30/kentucky-med.... Even if those exceptions don't save the plan from legitimate criticism, don't you think those are relevant facts to report? This piece doesn't even mention that fact once. Nor does it mention the fact that people under the age of 19 or over the age of 64 are exempt. Aren't those also relevant facts? https://kentuckyhealth.ky.gov/Parts/Pages/Community-Engagement.aspx
Nor does this piece mention the fact that job skills training, searching for a job & education for a job, GED classes or community college, community work experience, volunteering, and taking care of a relative or other person with a disabling health condition all count in qualifying for Medicaid.
Again, none of this saves the plan from legitimate criticism. But in omitting these critical facts, the Times deprives people of the opportunity to make informed judgments. It seems that journalistic integrity - and work ethic - have, unfortunately, gone missing from the Times.
9
All-American navel gazing. America spends a greater share of GDP on health care than any other nation on earth, by up to 6 or 7 percent of every dollar spent in the economy.
Everybody else spends less. Everybody else in the civilized world has a national health care system covering all their people. Funny thing, but their health outcomes are lots better than ours.
I think that spending more and letting kids and parents die unnecessarily is a cruel joke by conservatives.
Drill a hole in a coconut; put half an apple in and tie the coconut down. Come back later and retrieve the monkey too stupid to let go of the apple and walk away.
Health care in America, a Koch Brothers monkey trap.
6
Do health care providers have a right to engage in price gouging for their services? Are doctors entitled to make a profit from their patient's illnesses?
4
I believe they want them to die. The weak are just a burden on those of us with good health and better health insurance. The mystery to me is why people in these states vote Repubican. What good are your guns and family values when you're dying?
16
I’m a liberal, democratic physician. I see patients that are seemingly healthy and capable of working, yet surprisingly they tell me they are on disability. The incentives are such that they are better off than working and not having health care coverage. The welfare mentality is not a Republican concept, it does exist. The challenge is finding a balance so that the few that game a poorly designed system aren’t seen as moochers. This is the republican message, Romney’s 37% became Trump’s MS-13.
3
The concern for freeloading of any government support program ends up limiting benefits to those who must show far less ability to pay than the point where the costs of what is needed exceeds their ability to maintain their lifestyle. For the vast majority that life style is about average or below average. So it is common for people pushed to the limit by unemployment, catastrophic misfortunes, or a combination of misfortunes to need government assistance but not to be eligible unless they make themselves far poorer and less able to work themselves back to being self supporting again. Frankly, the guidelines insisted upon by legislators is that no benefits help anyone to regain self sufficiency because they consider that as freeloading.
4
Questions for you, democratic physician:
Were those patients on private or public disability insurance? I ask because I know of a fellow professional whose private disability insurance was very specific — he had been a trial attorney and the policy covered him if he could not perform each and every aspect of being a trial attorney in his specific field of law. One might argue that he paid into the insurance while he was able to do all that, so why shouldn’t he recoup his investment when he’s unable to do it all.
Even if your patients were not living on private disability insurance payments, the fact that they accurately feared loss of needed health care if they became employed is terrible. But the solution is not to deny them health care or even health insurance; it is to make health care and health insurance affordable to them.
In this vein, would you and your colleagues charge lower fees if we the people further subsidized your medical education (maybe including MCEU’s) so you didn’t have to worry so much about paying back the enormous educational debt many doctors and other healthcare professionals
incur during their training?
3
Let's simplify. The ONLY reason why healthcare is exclusive and expensive is because of greed.
In any business when demand is larger than supply, the item's cost goes up. A medical condition requires urgency, so by mixing urgency, low supply with ... greed, healthcare institutions, doctors and ... insurance providers become rich.
Take Canada or the UK as examples, insurance middle man are non-existent. Who needs them?
Everybody is covered and by showing a SS card they get all is needed w/o paying a cent.
Taxes cover everybody.
Here patients are hostages of all providers, insurance companies and drug laboratories.
It's a shame.
17
'A country’s deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. So as officials consider the future of Medicaid, they must ask themselves: Is this how America is going to be?'
And all these good Americans who are so suspicious of the poor undoubtedly consider themselves 'good Christians.' While I, like George W. Bush, believe deeply in the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, but unlike W don't believe in his divinity, I can only say Jesus must be rolling over in his grave.
4
"Do Poor People Have a Right to Health Care?
This is America! No, only people who are filthy rich and can afford it, or people who have well-paying jobs and benefits have a right to health care in the good ol' U.S.A.
Poor people certainly do not have a right to health care, as long as the Trump and the Republicans are in charge--nor to jobs that pay a living wage, or to a high quality public education, or to affordable housing and good public transportation.
Who do you think we are? France, which has the best health care system in the world that costs about half per capita compared to the U.S. and has better medical outcomes for its citizens. (Note: France is ranked #1 by WHO; the U.S. ranks #37, right below Costa Rica). But we don't want to be like France, do we???!!
And according to GOP logic, disabled people, who are the ones who most need health care, certainly do not have a right to health care.
After all, who is government for anyway in America?
Answer: For rich people, big corporations, and lobbyists who can pay for representation by their politicians.
Until poor people and disabled can pay for their politicians--like those who already have quality health insurance, they will have no right to affordable, decent health care coverage.
Making America Worse every single day.
It's the GOP way.
24
Amen to your comment !!
7
Do the uninsured poor wounded in a mass shooting have a right to care? Do uninsured children, the elderly and adults suffering from unregulated pollution have a right to care? Tragic!
7
The argument I frequently hear from conservatives is "Why should I pay for someone else's health care?" (The men asking this rhetorical question seem to like to pick on female contraception as an example of something they will never require and therefore it is unfair to allocate their tax dollars towards it.) So why should you pay for someone else's health care? I could ask myself the same question (e.g., Are you a smoker? Why then should my taxes go towards your health care?), but I know that someday I may require health care, as might you, and I am willing to pay a few extra dollars a year in order to ensure that safety net is there for both of us. Making sick, poor people work for health care is a, mean, perverted conservative fetish; it is un-Christian, un-neighborly and un-American. Americans are supposed to help each other when they’re down.
22
If this is a legit question, then what does it mean to be civilized?
6
It would seem that it is a right, codified in Federal Legislation in the Emergency Medical Transfer and Active Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA). Passed overwhelmingly by both parties in the House and Senate and signed by President Reagan. It would pass similarly today I am quite sure.
EMTALA was passed to make sure people aren’t turned away from the ER to die. So tell me how this is different? Take away Medicaid, and in no time flat, you will flood the ER with very sick people and their unmanaged diseases. Those costs are then shifted to everyone else who can pay, and you have effectively accomplished nothing. And remember, it was that situation that got EMTALA passed in the first place......
7
Paying for universal single payer health care through our tax system would cost far less than the ridiculously high premiums we currently pay for inadequate insurance. We are basically stuffing the pockets of middle men who have nothing to do with providing actual care. GOP = Greed Over People.
24
The fact that we have to answer this question is sickening.
I thought that the rights of poor people were discussed in the Old Testament and ratified in the New Testament and the Koran.
Major religions all extol the virtues of helping poor people.
In fact those most at spiritual risk are the rich.
Our own founding documents talk about our common good, the commonwealth, to which we pledge our sacred honor and our treasure - each other.
But it's the sheer immorality of allowing fellow creatures to suffer that horrifies me.
And, some of the hardest jobs pay the least. The people braying about "liberty" apparently have no idea what it's like to care for others. They don't understand the backbreaking labor of manual jobs.
None of you apparently understand that more than half the people in the world - women - literally perform agonizing work just to keep the human race alive. Many of us wind up destitute for our efforts. We don't get paid for scrubbing toilets, caring for our dying elders and husbands, cleaning diapers and surviving labor.
I can't get my mind around this barbarism, this American dream of liberty for me, despair and premature death for you.
25
Ah yes. Here it is again. Another example of the neo-Christian. I learned growing up in a Christian home while attending church and Sunday school than we must help those less fortunate than ourselves; the sick, the hungry, the homeless. I stopped attending church as an adult because having learn those lessons, I became dismayed and angry at the neo-Christians who have turned hateful, greedy and selfish. They say that they love Jesus and worship Jesus and they go to church each Sunday and put their contributions in the compassion plate thinking that doing so will ameliorate their hateful, greedy and selfish behavior all of the rest of the week. Just a word of caution to these many "good" neo-Christians, it ain't working!
10
Do Powerful People Have a Right to Deny Others Health Care?
11
In Canada, where I live, this argument is just silly. Here, everyone gets the care they need, regardless of their situation. As it should be. In the modern world, ensuring the basic heath care needs of every person is a testament to the very propose of existing togethet as a community of human beings. To deny health care to those who need it strikes me as profoundly cruel.
26
Breathable air is a valuable resource. Do you think only rich people have a right to it?
21
Based on this piece, if the vast majority of Medicaid recipients do work, and a sizable number have health issues that presumably preclude them from working, how big is this problem in fact? I fear this piece has failed to give an accurate reflection of the actual nature and scope of this problem....denying even one person the right to accessible health care is a problem obviously, but more substantive information would have been useful, even for an opinion piece... .
2
Why do the same people who claim healthcare is not a right proceed to send their children to public school. Education is not a right, yet I am paying high property taxes to send someone else's child to school.
I did not choose to be born, hence healthcare is a right. People choose to have children - their education is not a right.
1
What is almost always missing from the U.S. health care debate is the underlying fact that ensuring the health of the general public ensures the health of each and every one of us, poor and rich alike.
9
Health care should be a right. Is some lazy if the hide in their bedroom until 11:00 AM having "Executive Time" maybe so. Deny his free health care.
1
I am rather floored by this article and the comments. The plaintiffs who are called out (law student, RA patient, etc) would all either be meeting the requirement (law student) or be exempt based on their ability to work. The requirement is aimed at getting able bodied people to work or go to school. Mothers of young children (to age 5) are exempt - something people who actually pay for their insurance and health care dont have as an option. I am a physician and I do injections for back pain as part of my practice. The patients are pretty much divided between older stoic farmers and laborers and young people (under 40) who are uniformly obese and mostly on disability and/or some kind of assistance like Medicaid. Most would be healthy wih different life choices (losing weight and exercising). We have created a society where work isn’t valued and asking someone who receives a benefit to even volunteer (another option in the work requirement) is somehow an insult to the recipients’ integrity. If so few people would need the rule to get to work - what’s the issue? If most are looking for work or working let them show that. And BTW - I know many, many people who work every day with problems like rheumatoid arthritis and “hip dysplasia”, which is on a spectrum from needing nothing to being treated with surgery - but it’s treatable. This is just unbearably tiresome. Why not for once stand up for the people who are stuck paying these societal bills?
5
I don't see American farmers out volunteering to get their 20 Billion dollar a year subsidies from taxpayers. Many in DC who own farms and are not farming are also not volunteering to get their handout from the American taxpayers.
7
What so many people fail to understand is that life, civilizations, economies are all webs. Nothing survives independently and when one or more strands of the web fails the chaos ripples throughout the whole fabric. The inverse also holds true.
10
Is was not all that long ago -- and I mean within the lifetimes of some still alive today -- that doctors and hospitals could do very little except offer palliative care.
Since the 1930s there have been vast advances in medical practice rooted in scientific research, much of it funded by various governments and paid for from taxes on citizens in the U.S. and elsewhere. That knowledge belongs to all humanity and, as consequence, humanity has a right to care such knowledge makes possible.
6
The US did not evolve from a single tribe fending off invaders (no comment about the Native Americans), it did not evolve from a feudal or monarichal history that led "the masses" to have a sense of shared experience and some national sensibility of what the common good is and isn't. Everyone came to these shores to live differently and (largely) independently from the societies they left. There is no national sensibility of what the "common good" is, and little appetite for a national or regional conversation about it. That's why healthcare, along with other national social programs, will always be contentious and contended. The first question about medical care -- Is healthcare a right or a privilege? -- is never fully debated and resolved by a national referendum.
2
It would seem to me that one benefit of having all those who otherwise would not be included, would be to have their information added to the expanding medical knowledge of medical databases. My point being, is that every pill, treatment, and every test is collected and available for a researcher to gain a greater statistical picture. This I would hope would lead to better treatments for all.
Or you could just deny access and only provide opportunities to the desperate when they agree to macabre clinical trials. (sarcasm)
3
Surely, many of the 32 million Americans without health insurance will become old, become ill, or have a serious accident. So unless they die or disappear from the planet without consequence, they will require expensive healthcare. And without preventive medical care, they and their children will be less healthy and more likely to become a future burden to society .
While conservatives might prefer that sick and disabled citizens who can't fully pay their way just vanish so that the GOP can pass another tax cut for the benefit of the Republican Party financiers, that is not what will happen.
Without health insurance, ill and injured working Americans often become poor and unemployed Americans. They stop paying taxes, families lose breadwinners and society picks up the cost of both healthcare and welfare for them and their dependents.
There is no doubt that giving all Americans good healthcare, would extend their ability to work; make them more productive; Keep families together; Avoid bankruptcies, and actually do more to make America great than slogans on hats.
The ACA, (Obamacare), should have been named the keep Americans Working Act, because that is exactly what it accomplishes in the long run. We need to keep it and fix it.
10
If we would just legalize and enable voluntary suicide, I could promise not to cost the government another cent. It would certainly save me from reading story after story about how many Americans think I'm a bitter burden on our economy because I became too ill to work after 30 years of full-time, tax-paying employment.
16
I don't know if Americans have a right to health care or if it is in the Constitution.
And I don't care either.
It is something we as a civilized country should do.
It is totally disgusting to allow people to die for lack of care.
The ER treats acute illness but does not do screening.
How many croak because a cancerous lump or high blood pressure /cholesterol or diabetes etc. were not detected in time.
Can we afford it.
Yes.
Other countries pay half per capita for health care and have better longevity and infant mortality stats.
We need single payer to cut out middlemen and we need to control drug prices.
Other countries do that.
We can also.
21
So the Trump administration wants to force those most in need of healthcare to work. It puts children into cages and detention centers and deletes their family information. It opposes breastfeeding infants. It cancels payments for services already given that permit high risk insurance patients to receive critical care. It cancels preexisting condition coverage for 52 million Americans.
Cradle to grave has been fast tracked.
Three questions. Is it going to add a Trump revision to the Declaration of Independence's reference to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness such as price on demand? And is it going to rename the Health and Human Services Department to Sickness and Inhumane Practices? Who is featured on the GOP's Pro Death Party ads? The Grim Reaper or a skull and bones with an orange topper?
8
“It also reflects persistent national ambivalence over the question of whether health care is a human right or an earned privilege — and, if the latter, how “earned” should be defined.”
Health care can not be a basic human right because it is a resource and cost intensive service provided to humans rather than the right of a person to be free to be who they want to be. Thus universal health care is contingent on a society being able to afford to provide it. No country can be blamed for not providing health care if they simply do not have the resources to do so like they can be blamed for limiting free speech.
But in a society which can afford to provide healthcare to all of its citizen it becomes a matter of not a right but of justice and fairness. The incredible wealth of the United States leave absolutely no question whether we have the *ability* to provide universal healthcare. Thus if we continue to deny this vital and lifesaving service to every resident regardless of their ability to pay, then we must stop referring to ourselves as a just and fair society. If we continue to exclude some from such a critical benefit perhaps we should modify our Pledge of Allegiance to conclude “ with liberty and justice for some”.
8
Pricing pressure is the only way out of this healthcare mess, more people need to pay for healthcare directly, not through insurance or Medicare/Medicaid. That said the people who should be paying for healthcare should generally be those who can afford it. If we simply stopped allowing high to medium income earners from writing health insurance off on their taxes and used the funds to help the poor pay for healthcare then we'd be able to allow everyone to have good healthcare. universal healthcare is a really terrible idea, the government should only cover healthcare for the poor not the wealthy.
Middle class and successful folks deserve healthcare too. We make too much for subsidies, but on the open market would pay 30% of our gross income on healthcare. 2 adults 50yo recent quote was $1200/mo with a $13,000 deductible. That is immoral.
15
"A country's deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens." So says The Editorial Board. The Editorial Board also says Medicaid "now insures one in five Americans, or roughly 74 million people". Perhaps The Editorial Board should read what it publishes. Because, it appears that this country treats its most vulnerable citizens pretty decently. When you add the elderly vulnerable covered by Medicare and US veterans covered by the VA to those covered by Medicaid, this country can be proud of its commitments to health coverage. And, when you factor in the health coverage provided to the largest employment sector in this country - employees at all levels of government entities - government writ large is doing quite well. Of course, The Editorial Board can conveniently ignore the huge percentage of GDP expended on National Health Expenditures and rail about ANY attempt to increase efficiency and fiscal responsibility in health coverage. Because, NEVER TRUMP.
7
I don't know the answer, but I do know, that what we are doing now is not working. We are spending about 18% of our GDP on healthcare and getting worse results then the rest of the world.
If we were spending 10% like everyone else, then I seriously doubt we would be having this debate.
6
A society who takes care of its people regardless of their station in life is a society that produces citizens who are more productive and happier. When it comes to whether or not one can take their child to the doctor, or any member of our population hesitating care because of inability to pay, there is something terribly wrong with our society.
As Americans we have to get "over," the stigma of socialized medicine. Our priorities are all wrong, as one of the richest countries in the world we neglect our people and our communities which foments crime and discontent which turns into hostility.
The Western Industrialized countries of the world have had some form of socialized medicine in place for many decades. Certainly, we can glean the best from them and fashioned it to accommodate our needs as a country. Each time I visit many of these countries and talk to the locals they would never trade their health coverage for ours; no way. Sure, they pay higher taxes but this takes the place of premiums, deductibles, etc. They never have to worry about "am I covered" for this or that. There is less crime, and there is more tranquility. A wish for America.
13
If, as the author asserts, there weren’t 10 million unemployed working age adults receiving Medicaid and Welfare, we wouldn’t need 10 million illegal immigrants to cut the grass.
7
“Surely H.H.S. officials have seen this data.” Surely they don’t care. They are determined to grind Those People into the ground, punishing them for being disabled, old or sick. Wouldn’t surprise me if the wreckers were humming “Welfare Cadillac” to themselves as they wrote up their diktats.
9
Read The Scarlet Letter lately? It might help us to understand who we really are:
...The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of
human virtue and happiness they might originally pro-
ject, have invariably recognized it among their earliest
practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil
as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a
prison...
What guides the thinking of people who build a prison and cemetery first? It doesn’t appear to be spiritual, medical or educational care.
We are a young country by comparison and juvenile in our collective thinking. If I don’t have it, You shouldn’t either seems to be a popular belief, along with our basic unwillingness to share. It’s not fair if He has healthcare when He won’t work is another.
Life isn’t always fair — ask any parent who lost a child to a disease or war. Ask any friend or gold star spouse. Sometimes we do stupid things, sometimes careless, and occasionally we’re just lazy. How many people have had to be saved from precarious sporting situations after they were told conditions were too dangerous to participate? Yet we always go to the expense and danger of saving Them because it’s the right thing to do.
In the end, I fear, this is much brouhaha that misses a more important point: WE have to get healthcare costs under control. It wouldn’t be so distasteful to pay for lazy cousin Kenny’s healthcare if doing so wasn’t bankrupting us all.
6
Healthcare is not "bankrupting us all."
That's the lie the rich tell in order to deflect the fact they they possess most of the wealth in the nation.
The US has the resources and the wealth to employ every able-bodied person on its soil, with good wages and adequate healthcare.
It's just a matter of who controls the wealth.
5
A right to healthcare? A question framed in the contemporary American context in which everything in monetized. Society has a right to peace and order, and they cannot be bought by starving some of the people, by allowing many to live in ignorance and squalor, or by allowing people to die for want of basic care while others squander great wealth on toys of every kind. Americans deserve an America that is civilized, an America where honor is still a positive quality, and where caring is not a weakness.
15
A better question might be, do we have a duty to provide health care services to all fellow Americans? What does it say about us if we choose to let people sicken and die because they didn't 'earn' the right to health care services.? Nothing good....
10
Here in Canada every Province is mandated to provide healthcare to all its citizens but a quarter century before Canadians had universal healthcare two provinces had government provided hospital care for all.
That America still doesn't provide healthcare for all is a triumph of not capitalism over socialism but a triumph of the perversion of religion and the destruction of real Christianity and the extolling of false scriptures.
Seventy years ago Saskatchewan under the leadership of an American Christian Minister and his party based in the Co-operative movement in Britain and the US introduced free hospital care for all shortly thereafter Alberta introduced universal Hospital care. Alberta was governed by a far right Christianist government based on the bible and the teachings of Bible Bill Aberhart a preacher whose weekly sermons were broadcast throughout Alberta.
I am not a Christian but even the most cursory examination of the bible should lead one to conclude that universal healthcare in the 21st century is fundamental to being a Christian.
The USA claims to be the most Christian nation on the planet and I can only ask "Who is this Christ you claim to follow?" He is obviously not the same Christ who mandated universal hospital care in our two most Christian provinces 70 years ago.
14
"Medicaid is a state and federal program that provides health coverage if you have a very low income." ( SEE https://www.medicareinteractive.org )
You have to have income-presumably not passive from investments-to get Medicaid. If you are unskilled or underemployed, and this is why you have low income, requiring you to get more skills or work experience is great.
The NYT, in "A Chance to See Disabilities as Assets" (https://nyti.ms/2jXlj3h) cites the Job Accommodation Network findings that reasonable accommodations are at most very low cost, but the benefits are priceless:
Direct Benefits %
Retained a valued employee 90%
Increased the employee's productivity 72%
Eliminated costs associated with training a new employee 61%
Increased the employee's attendance 56%
Increased diversity of the company 41%
Saved workers' compensation or other insurance costs 38%
Hired a qualified person with a disability 14%
Promoted an employee 10%
Indirect Benefits %
Improved interactions with co-workers 64%
Increased overall company morale 62%
Increased overall company productivity 56%
Increased workplace safety 46%
Improved interactions with customers 46%
Increased overall company attendance 41%
Increased profitability 28%
Increased customer base 17%
( https://askjan.org/media/lowcosthighimpact.html )
Just giving people money is the Dems' Democratic Socialism vision.
4
Although Medicaid serves an important need and people are generally in favor of it, it is universally known within the health professions, at least, that it creates an unequal two-tier health system. Many providers will not accept Medicaid because of its low payments and access to certain specialties, such as orthopedic surgery and opthalmology is very limited. This is yet another reason for the US to adopt a single payer system modeled on Medicare. It doesn't mean that everyone has to be covered by the single-payer system, but people who opt out of it should bear the high administrative costs of private health insurance or accept the limited benefits of the junk health insurance policies made legal by the 2017 tax law.
5
The problem with free healthcare for the non-working poor is that the working poor have to pay an absurd portion of their income for the most basic care. I can think about this issue abstractly because I have very good health care but I think about all the people in minimum wage jobs without benefits and wonder how they can possibly see this as fair. The problem is, and I hate to say this, that our American notion that all aspects of society must generate a profit creates a healthcare system unresponsive to social demands.
6
This is not a problem in any country in the world that has universal healthcare.
4
The question posed is rhetorical, oui?
The question should not be who have a right to health care. We're living in the Twenty-First century. The question should be why hasn't it been implemented decades ago?
It seems obvious. Americans have the right according to their beloved Constitution by which they abide to have almost anything they want, health care among them. It is a tragedy the US is so backwards in this respect, and uncalled for. And yet, Americans do not seem to want much of anything, except paying less taxes and getting government off its back.
When a nation has such a preponderance of deplorably ignorant voters (courtesy of America's public schools) no wonder the average working slob has anything at all.
Do Americans care about such thing? If they did, they have a poor way of showing it.
DD
Manhattan
7
Let's get real & truly discuss this question in pragmatic terms. Health care is not just threatened to be denied to the poor who may have difficulty holding a job or err in whatever paperwork will be required but is already effectively denied to many with jobs who are too scared to seek treatment because of high deductibles or co-pays that can be financially ruinous. As a result many do not catch threats to life when such can be easily treated & are effectively condemned to a difficult death that will cost much more in productivity loss & medical care before death.
Yet many who feel morally superior assert that imposing this regime will serve a public good because there may be some free-riders taking advantage of medicaid. If all had equal ability to earn in out system then such may be the case but anyone with real world experience knows that in any system some will be unable to pay their own way. And what do you say to those who are employed but can't afford deductibles or co-pays? Too bad doesn't work for me
Maybe it is just me be I can't fail to see the irony in many who claim to be pro-life who possess an extraordinary concern for the unborn but fail to show any real concern for those who are indisputably human life. Failure to provide medical care to those who can be helped just because of their financial state is retroactive abortion
8
Medicare for all. Medicare for all. Medicare for all!!!!! It will be cheaper in the long run if ALL people have access to basic health and preventive care. Then they won't have to use the ER for primary care. Start with that- let's get out of our heads about what is "a right" or not. And of course it's ridiculous to think that people sick enough to be on Medicaid should be forced to go out looking for work. Many are on Medicaid because they had a serious illness and lost the ability to work. We are ALL one serious illness away from being on Medicaid ourselves in this country unless we're independently wealthy. I see it every day at the hospital where I work.
10
The myth of the lazy welfare queen has been used by the GOP as a punch line for decades. The fact is most people who can work want to if they have the opportunity — the Montana program proves it. Problem with Alex Azar is that he’s a pharmaceutical executive in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. Just another corrupt Trump appointee out to dismantle the very institution they head.
12
The lazy welfare queen used by the GOP includes many in their base, and in DC, i.e. American farmers get taxpayer-funded subsidies yearly whether they are on the farm or sitting in DC and just own the farm. How is that not welfare?
4
Cutting much needed medical care for poor and disabled people is unconscionable ESPECIALLY as the Trump administration and Republican just passed a HUGE tax cut where 80% of the benefits went to the very very rich. Republicans ad Trump are unbelievably cruel. How do they get voted in?
9
Health care access should never be class-based.
We are catering to a few individuals who want to feel like they have something special. Let them use concierge medicine and pay up the wazoo for it.
11
Just another example of the Trump Administration’s cruelty, its lack of compassion, and unfitness for office.
5
To all those who resent having any of their hard-earned tax dollars help pay for healthcare for lower-income people who engage in what they think is “risky behavior” consider this:
If you ever get into a serious car or motorcycle accident, or go jogging alone in the early morning and are assaulted, or leave your bedroom window open on a warm night and get robbed, etc., why should the rest of us have to pay for police to respond to your call, to document and investigate your accident or crime against you? Why should we have to foot the bill for the DA’s office to prosecute your perpetrator? We didn’t engage in the risky behaviors of driving a motor vehicle, failing to bring a buddy with us when we jog or to pick a less secluded area/time to jog, carelessly leave our windows unlocked and open at night! What if your house has faulty wiring or you forget to turn the stove off and your house catches fire — should the rest of us more careful people have to fork out our hard-earned money (in taxes) to pay for fire fighting services you and your negligent family receive?
The answer is that in a society — whether a family, town, state, country, region — we help one another and we commit to mutual aid. That’s how we humans survive. Health needs are no different and should be treated accordingly.
Don’t like it? Go be a hermit on some tiny island. But something tells me you won’t be too comfortable there, all by your lonesome.
14
I can't believe that we are even having this dialogue. Is this what we have become as a nation, one that would deny health care to anyone. Is this what we want to be, a people that would deny someone a stupid wedding cake because they are gay. Do we want to be a nation that imprisons children because their parents are illegal immigrants. Conservatism in this country has gone off the rails. Republicans please cease your efforts to make America great again. Take what you are selling elsewhere.
11
What a mean spirited agenda these conservatives have concocted - a witches brew of shadenfreude, paranoia and prejudice seasoned with eau de Ayn Rand. We have other impulses too as humans- caring, kindness, open-mindedness- unfortunately none of these has been successfully harnessed for power and political gain. Wasn't there a hymn "whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers..." not hearing much of that from the religious right these days.
9
Which came first? Being poor or being sick?
And if you want to make care to the poor contingent on their behavior, that is, employment, I suggest we do the same with the overweight gentleman who was in line ahead of me and ordered the large fried fisherman's platter and a large chocolate frappe for lunch. His health coverage should be contingent on his eating habits.
4
How do you explain to people that they should care about other people? Where do you start?
8
For the past 10 years republicans ran against the ACA and received the majority of votes. They keep winning so I think it is high time to block access for those unwilling to vote or to pay.
Think I am unreasonable? No, just tired of voting the democratic ticket and losing. I am no longer willing to pay for anything for anyone who unwilling to vote or participate
Let’s vote nationally for universal healthcare with a chart of costs by income. Let the people vote and let their vote select the care they are eligible for for the next two years and then let’s vote again, and again and again until the idiots learn that participating and voting and taxes are for their own good.
6
There's only one way to keep Medicaid solvent: widen the risk pool to include the wealthy and healthy (i.e. extend it to all Americans). But that solution is rarely mentioned the New York Times (or any mainstream news outlet) without a hefty dose of poo-pooing. It's just not the "exceptional" American way.
5
Good luck getting healthcare with Medicaid rates as low as they are. Even illegal immigrants hate the care Medicaid provides.
1
One could also raise the FICA cap....
1
Poor people have a right to healthcare. Able bodied people should work to get healthcare.
2
I'm honestly disturbed by many of the comments on this article. I can't say that socialized medicine is the right answer, but it seems clear that the current private sector model isn't either. Why does it have to be one or the other, conservative or liberal, black or white. Whether you think them lazy freeloaders and undeserving, or understand that there ARE truly people out there who need help and cannot work - for Pete's sake - THESE ARE HUMAN BEINGS afterall!
This "I got mine so screw you, why should I pay for yours" attitude just defies words. It also defies the intent of the founding fathers in their concept of 'a greater good', the things we share as Americans. We are a community, for better or for worse, like it or not.
Many claiming to be good Christians, go to church every Sunday are just window dressers. When push comes to shove, their politics reveal little empathy or compassion for those who don't have the same opportunities or abilities, or who happen to believe differently than they might. Cafeteria Christians, they pick and choose which teachings they embrace when useful or convenient. Vehement and passionate about the preciousness of life, man- once you're here, you're on your own and apparently not worth much.
I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. Yes, those things can co-exist effectively. I'm all for ensuring that programs are efficiently run, have proper controls and spend wisely, but that doesn't mean people can't come first.
10
Everyone, poor and not poor, deserves reasonable health care.
It’s actually more cost-effective: untreated illnesses can result in enormous expenses. Antihypertensive, anti-diabetes, and anti-high cholesterol medications are relatively inexpensive. Treatments for strokes, heart attacks, blindness, and kidney failure are very, very costly. The ACA was designed to establish fundamental levels of coverage that everyone ought to have, and then to make access to insurance affordable for everyone. Remember, the ACA was born from a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. The idea was to have universal coverage within our system of for-profit insurers being the primary providers of health insurance. Again, for all those clamoring for single-payer, or Medicare for all, it is essential to understand that several nations have universal coverage and yet still have private insurers. Switzerland comes to mind. It has strict regulations that mandate coverage both in terms of benefits provided and the obligation to have insurance. Costs are regulated, and the net effect is health care expenses as a percent of GDP are approximately 60% of US costs. Medicare for all means wiping out for profit insurers. Is the government going to pay off shareholders? Privatize these businesses? Making Medicare available as an insurance option might be reasonable. Means testing might be reasonable. There are ways to fix this; punishing the poor is not part of a rational solution.
5
"Health Insurers Warn of Turmoil as Trump Suspends Payments". The title in quotation marks is a headline in today's newspaper. "The Trump administration said Saturday that it was suspending a program that pays billions of dollars to insurers to stabilize health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, a freeze that could increase uncertainty in the markets and drive up premiums this fall." Obviously Trump and the Republicans say no to poor people receiving ANY benefits for their health!
5
They had to do it in response to a lawsuit and court order - read the article about it.
When the machines take over, we’ll all be out of a job, and out of healthcare? It is the job of humane creatures to maintain humaneness even in the face of hopeless progress. Judge a society by how it treats its animals. Judge a robotic society by how it treats its creators (humans).
First let’s clarify the terms “health” and “wealth”. You’ve heard of mental health, and spiritual wealth. Without clean air and water, the planet is uninhabitable, there is zero health, zero wealth. A healthy environment provides the basics for sustainable good bodily and mental health. With exposure to interesting activities (education), people can learn to make wise choices, to pursue things of value to them.
1
Health insurance premiums are increasing dramatically, and many of Trump's voters earn lower incomes. They are the ones that will lose their insurance and will need Medicaid. Many of them will be faced with this work requirement. I am hopeful that this will lose the Right their next elections.
4
Studies have shown that the typical Medicare enrollee will receive about three times as much in benefits as they made in contributions during their working years. Of course Medicare payroll tax is income-based, so low-income retirees contribute less. Does HHS want people to be disenrolled from Medicare once they have exhausted the benefit they “earned”?
4
The corrupt demagogue Trump gets into a lather because poor people can get modest health insurance. These greed is good types never tire of telling the public how much the "undeserving poor" are a drain on their taxes. When in fact the moment the poor lose access to Medicaid they will show up as uninsured at emergency rooms and cost tax payers billions of dollars or of course they can watch hospitals around the country go bankrupt. All of this a ploy to harm people on the stupid argument that it is sound gov't. So people will die unnecessarily and child mortality will increase and white peoples life expectancy will continue to decline.
7
The only people who need a work requirement for healthcare is Congress. They are on recess more than first graders, and I haven’t seen them do a thing that would qualify as work for years.
21
My son in law is European. In a conversation with American friends he was asked if he objected to his taxes (comparable to ours, not higher) are used to pay for health care for others, he could not understand the question.
When it was explained that Americans don’t want their taxes to pay for health care for others, he was incredulous. “Of course not,” he replied.
Then he wanted to know what Americans get for the taxes they pay. No health care. No college education. No modern transit.
19
Oh, but we get to build all the tools to kill; best in the world at that, better use of taxpayer dollars than actually caring for your people, I mean come on, we use them to disrupt peaceful areas of the world, completely destroy the culture, turn the citizens into refugees and then take their children away put them in cages never to be seen again.....who needs health care services? Isn’t this more fun....?
2
The NYTimes would do a service to reader by explaining, in an article or series of articles, the different requirements to qualify for Medicaid under, or along with, social security disability vs. qualifying without it. Readers’ comments seem to confuse and conflate the two. Also helpful would be a comparison of the aforementioned prior to, and since, implementation of the Affordable Care Act. I seem to recall the Times reporting on a NYC family with significantly disabled twin girls, in the 1990’s, and their struggle to keep insurance for their girls and to afford the care they needed. That might be a good starting point.
4
Health care for all is not a right but a it is a good governmental policy.A single payor system would cost no more then our present disjointed system.
The American College of Surgeons, definitely not a bunch of socialists endorsed a single payor system decades ago.
12
You do not have a right for what someone else must provide.
However, as a society, one would hope we would look to go beyond the most basic rights, to provide our fellow members the basics of what is necessary to live and contribute to our society. Food, medical care, and basic protection from the elements would fit. The US government seems to be intent on creating within the nation a system by which the powerful are aided in their enslavement of the rest. This perverse economic system has zero to do with natural rights and everything to do with a corrupt interpretation of concepts in order to create a plutocracy. We know more about the natural state of humans than we ever have, we are not independent individuals but interdependent social creatures. Everything we think or do depends upon others and our environment - this is biological and psychological fact. Exactly what type of society do we want to live in? Ayn Rand had little knowledge of economics, human systems, individual or social psychology; she was a novelist and a popular disgruntled philosopher. Yet, for some reason, this outdated and flawed system of social Darwinism currently has a stranglehold on our government policy. During times of war and national crisis, we are encouraged to shop. The poor simply don't consume enough. If our country had a guiding ethos other than consumerism and greed, perhaps we could make something of it. America land of the ignorant and home of the enslaved.
6
When individuals join into groups they gain the ability to benefit from the cooperative efforts which enable them to accomplish tasks which they cannot alone. In turn they must set aside personal priorities in favor of serving group priorities. The result is better chances for living longer and assuring that more children survive to adulthood and the ability to reproduce. As members of societies which provide advantages which we do not provide for ourselves we do owe others a share of what we are able to gain.
1
Why is Kentucky’s governor fighting so hard to end Medicare expansion? Especially if there are cheaper and more effective ways to deliver health care?
Is it just so they can send the entire topic of health care to a gerrymandered Supreme Court?
Kentuckians I beg you to replace ALL of your politicians before they destroy America.
5
The Trump administration is trying to kill another part of Obamacare that restricts pre-existing conditions from health care coverage. If all Americans have equal rights -why is this coming back? Under American with Disabilities Act passed under Bush 41 this practice should be banned. Yet once again the Conservatives say this is fine and say its a special right. But people who live in rural areas get benefits urban Americans never see. So where are equal rights. Many states are restricting the Constitutional right to vote but not to own a gun. Both are in the Constitution.
4
I was on my organization's political affairs committee when we interviewed candidates for local offices. A Republican stated she was opposed to any form of universal health care, so I asked her what she thought what the appropriate response should be when impoverished and uninsured sick or injured people show up at hospital emergency rooms.
"They'll just have to die." So, if you want to know if poor people have the right to health care, the answer depends upon whom you ask. (BTW, WWJ say?)
9
I'd like to ask all the public sector union members- the ones who have lifetime pension and healthcare- If they would be willing to relinquish their "Cadillac" medical plans in exchange for socialized medicine.???
4
Yes
4
Yes. Although, those “Cadillac” health insurance plans are becoming a thing of the past because of Obamacare. Remember it was health insurance reform, NOT healthcare reform. It was also conceived by a republican.
I’m in the stagehand’s union and that’s how our insurance works, we work at different rates and those who make more support the others who make less. I’m happy to know that my union dues go to help those who might have less. It gives me peace of mind that my hard-earned money is going to help my neighbors. At least in my union.
7
Depends what one means by the terms you use. Some countries have better socialized medicine than some "Cadillac"plans. Would you be willing to change your HC plan for something better than a public sector "Cadillac" plan?
4
I don't understand why we don't care about the people sitting next to us. Do you want your school age child to be in a classroom with a child suffering from a terrible toothache, unable to eat and acting out because of lack of medical care? Do you want to sit on the bus next to someone who has untreated medical problems which could infect you?
Oh I forgot, the lawmakers making these rules send their kids to private school and don't take the bus.) Part of medical care for others is care for ourselves.
We could pay doctors well and provide medical care for all if we didn't spend so much money on nuclear submarines (how many do we really need?) and wars around the world.
11
My brother is still alive because of Obamacare (ACA). I'm willing to pay more in my taxes, as a Christian, in order to keep other people's brothers alive, too.
33
The Republicans want to bring slavery back. That is pretty much what these work requirements to receive bare minimum necessary to survive benefits amounts An economist recently calculated the labor cost of slavery amounted to about $15 dollars an hour when adjusted for inflation.
9
Health care should be a right. Where I live it is. I'm so glad I no longer live in the United States.
8
The fact that you're asking this question is obscene. Everyone has the right to health care. Are poor people any less important than others? Everyone deserves affordable health care.
7
I spoke with a young libertarian teacher who informed me that she should have no responsibility to pay taxes for the health care of others; that it was the responsibility of their families or their church. I asked her what they should do if they had no church and no family. Her reply "they should die, they are a drain on society".
This is the mindset of so called conservatives. It is not just cruel, it is bloodless, cold, economic Darwinism. This is not a "health care work requirement" argument, it is a "if you don't have money, you don't deserve to live" argument.
16
And yet they are delusional enough to call themselves Christian. They clearly don't know Jesus' teachings.
3
A right to healthcare? I don’t remember reading that in the Constitution
3
There is thing about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as "inalienable rights" at the heart of why people got together and decided to have a country a while back.
6
I believe it’s part of our inalienable right to life.
And, by the way, you can’t credibly claim to be “pro-life” and at the same time effectively deny your neighbors life-saving medical care, whether or not they can afford it.
8
What other type of double-think processes does this reactionary Administration and Congress have in mind for the poor, the disabled or outcast members of our society-How about bringing back the farming out of the mentally ill, incarcerated or imprisoned into work camps or road gangs (like they were in the 1920's and 1930's)?
3
Whether they “like it” or not, people are morally and spiritually better off if they exchange their labor for their necessities.
3
And an arthritic 80 year-old should work at what?
4
You present a strawman. Nobody expects an arthritic 80 year old to work. Arguments like that simply undermine the good will required for an honest, open debate on issues for which there is no clear or ideal answer.
In Trump's America, cabinet members, who are already millionaires, spend thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of taxpayer dollars on fancy office furniture, first class travel, unnecessary security details and perks for their wives, they are defended by the president and there's never any presumption that they will pay any of it back. But, poor people with chronic illness are thought to be cheats, trying to milk the system, and are made to jump through multiple hoops just to obtain the most basic healthcare benefits. It's enough to make you sick.
22
Nail on the head right there.
1
Do Poor People Have a Right to Health Care?
Ask California. Does its poor have decent health care?
It's one of the richest and most liberal state. It still does not have an universal, single payer healthcare.
And that weakens the morality of your preaching to Kentuckians.
1
Both Kentuckians and Californians use the ACA as their primary means of regulating and funding healthcare. I don’t understand your point.
7
The country and no state has Universal Health Care because it takes time to reform a massive system that has been built on private companies for profit.
5
The fact that this is even a debate is sad and shocking.
7
Three pervasive myths about poor people: 1) they are all lazy, 2) they are all on drugs, and 3) they all drive expensive new vehicles. You can ask just about anyone in the God-fearing W. TX town I live in and they will insist these three things are absolute facts with very few exceptions. The Right promoted these falsehoods heavily on social media during the last presidential campaign. (One meme I saw repeatedly on Facebook showed a refrigerator absolutely stuffed with expensive food items and claimed it was typical for a SNAP recipient.) The Right has done a masterful job of curdling the milk of human kindness and is trying, hard, to legislate the end of basic human decency. Their bottom line? How dare poor people exist and need food, shelter, and healthcare! They should be punished! This is tragic.
9
Well spoken. Everyone should read your comment and that of Naomi from New England and of SW.
1
The taxes of the 1% and middle class, hard at work paying the benefits of 10 million eternally unemployed working age adults. This travesty fuels class and race warfare, attracts legal/illegal immigrants, and guarantees the Democratic Party a loyal, growing voting block. Imagine how our country would benefit if these squandered funds were productively invested in America’s future?
Photographers, get your cameras ready. Who will be the next Dorothea Lange? Who will document the new depression-era-like conditions for the poor and needy in Trump's America? Whose photographs will become iconic as our ancestors look back to this time and wonder how such a wealthy nation treated its most vulnerable citizens so carelessly?
".....A country’s deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. So as officials consider the future of Medicaid, they must ask themselves: Is this how America is going to be?"
7
"Hopefully the justices, despite the high court’s impending rightward lurch, see through the conservative myths about Medicaid and do right by the program’s recipients.
A country’s deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. So as officials consider the future of Medicaid, they must ask themselves: Is this how America is going to be?"
No longer a beacon for those seeking a safe haven and opportunity -No longer compassion for our neediest neighbors!
Trumpistan
4
As a little fillip to the discussions here, Trump has - having failed to destro the ACA, announced it is withholding funds from insurers meant to provide "risk adjustment" payments for the sickest and most expensive patients.
He is likely to blame a court decision - so far he has just blamed Obama as usual - but while the decision found fault with the formula used, it did not order suspension of payments. He isn't waiting for added Medicaid restrictions - he's determined to end the program one way or another.
Right to health care? Not in Trumpworld.
4
Are we mixing Medicaid with welfare?
Medical care should never be denied or diminish because of ability to pay.
I do agree that in order to receive welfare those able to work should.
City or State Hospitals should be maintain by taxes and no patient should receive a bill.
Same as education.
Private Hospitals same as private schools should not receive the benefits of non for profit that only serve to increase the packet of the administrators and a few physicians.
2
“That paradox, of increasing support for Medicaid amid lingering suspicion toward Medicaid recipients, underscores persistent questions about how Americans view those in need”
There is no paradox at all. Americans believe in helping those in need (we are by far the most generous nation on earth). But Americans also believe in people doing as much for themselves as possible. The quantifications provided in this article don’t change a thing because (just as with immigration in Europe) this is not a quantitative issue; it is profoundly qualitative.
1
The poor have a right to healthcare just as much as anybody else does in the USA and the world. However, healthcare is not free. Nor should it be. This is not to say, the poor must work in exchange for healthcare, but at some point, a line must be drawn in terms of how permissive a society will be. In other words, incentives must be established for the poor to seek gainful employment. Linking healthcare benefits to employment is one such incentive. For most Americans that incentive already exists through compensation for work. A perpetual free-ride is unsustainable. Thank you.
7
There are three issues with healthcare, the first is the unhealthy state of most Americans by their own choices, whether poor, middle class or rich, the fact that we don't have a single Payer system in place, and last, but probably the most important, that we don't have a system in place like Switzerland, per person, costly, and which actually makes people responsible to take care of themselves. You can only have a high deductible if you are healthy in Switzerland. Everyone there has healthcare on a sliding fee schedule. We have a very deceptive, and dangerous idea that people have no control over their own health, which is wrong. They can choose to eat healthy, exercise, give up smoking, doing drugs, and limiting alcohol intake. Because the majority of people have healthcare paid for by others, they are indifferent to the costs, most of which are now borrowed as healthcare costs are the number one driver. of not only the costs to the federal government, but state budgets as well. You can't let people choose to be dependents of the government, as it is basically saying that they are all babies, incapable of being told as adults that they must change, as the government won't continue to pay for their choices. There are as many middle class people, overweight, and obese, as many Democrats as Republicans, as many rich, who are obese, and overweight, as the poor. Believing that we shouldn't come face to face with this is the most politically incorrect truth.
3
Everyone should receive basic healthcare. But at some point questions need to be asked. For example is it my responsibility to pay for the healthcare of a couple who decided to have four children they can’t afford above the most basic care? I think not.
5
How about a couple who had to have 4 kids they could not afford because they could not get abortions?
3
Many of the comments here seem incredibly proud to be doctors or business owners who "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps," only to point out the minor abuse of a system that is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a semblance of civilization. Do you realize that a great majority of those who have "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" were born with privileges comparable to one owning a closet of Loubotins vs. one not having feet? If you think the scales are at any way balanced in the United States towards accessible healthcare, even through employment, you are sadly so far from the reality that most of us know that there is little hope for the future. "Just sayin."
9
As an economist I deplore your omission of one of the most important reasons to provide healthcare to all: it is a public good and the healthiness of all the general public helps everybody in the general public. Yes, even the rich benefit when the poor are kept out of the emergency room and able enough to work if they can find a job.
15
If poor people are subject to such questions, then all should be. Are multi-billion dollar corporations entitled to hire workers at minimum wage when they could pay more? Are millionaires entitled to the services of yard and cleaning workers at low wages even though they could afford to pay more? Are any of us entitled to buy low-priced items that are low-priced because they are produced and sold by low-wage workers? How are any of us "entitled" to the efforts of the poor? And why is it that only poor people are expected to justify their existence, give up their dignity and self-respect and only they are made to feel beholden to the rest of us, when all of us benefit from the efforts of poor people?
14
The Kentucky requirement to work is simple minded but don’t use compassion or morality as the argument opposing the change. Use practicality.
Poor people WILL get medical care if they are sick or injured. It will either be through Medicaid where the government has negotiated low cost reimbursement rates or it will be through hospital indigent care where they treat them minimally and then transfer the cost to insured patients through $5,000 a night rooms and $80 bottles of aspirin.
So which way is better? I’ll take Medicaid thank you.
9
As a former registered Republican and currently independent,
my life long experience tells me that it is necessary for the "poor" to work, forcefully or not. It is good for the society at large and for the "poor" to gain some sort of self dignity. My heritage has taught me "those who do not work lack the feeling of societal participation!
2
But work at living wage jobs.
5
Double standard. What about the idle rich? They are a drag on our society. Trump’s never worked a day in his life. Never had a job, a boss. Just play, play, play.
5
"That paradox, of increasing support for Medicaid amid lingering suspicion toward Medicaid recipients, underscores persistent questions about how Americans view those in need." I don't think it's at all complicated; most Americans don't support providing benefits to an adult who could, but elects not to, work to support himself or herself. No doubt there are difficult issues of definition and administration in trying to apply that view, but the principle is clear to most of us.
1
Are there enough living wage jobs for all?
3
But Medicaid recipients overwhelmingly aren’t able-bodied. And therein lies the problem: Medicaid recipients have been made out to be undeserving leeches, when that simply is not the case.
The argument that people don’t want to support someone who can work, but refuses to, takes the exception and makes it the rule. It is maddening the way people do this.
6
The adults “who...elect not to” are relatively small in numbers so why are they the headliners? $7.35 an hour don’t cut it (the 1968 minimum is worth $11 now) and still the punishers are busy moving the goalposts around.
5
Unfortunately, declaring medical care a "right" gets into a lot of messy questions about who is exactly entitled to what. I think it is better to view medical care as a responsibility of governance, just as public safety is. No one has the right to have a police officer standing outside his/her home, but basic public safety is understood to be governing responsibility.
What makes this such a difficult question is that medical problems can be a result of bad luck or bad habits and the second one especially confuses the issue of what people have a "right" to. Everyone would agree that a child with cancer should get the best therapy out there -- whether considered a right or a responsibility, the mandate is clear. But does an alcoholic who refuses to stop drinking have a right to a liver transplant, especially when it is a limited resource?
Further clouding the issue is deciding when expensive treatment is necessary. A heart attack is life threatening and needs therapy immediately -- this is a clear responsibility of an effective medical system. But does everyone with a hip pain have a "right" to a hip replacement?
All medical systems have limited resources and need at some point direct them to what is essential first. Clearly some limitations of access to medical care are unconscionable -- hence it is a civil responsibility -- but not all medical needs can be met. The notion of health care as a "right" clouds decision making in the margins.
5
I argue that health is a major indicator of the existential value of a society. I also agree with the author's assertion that the real purpose of work requirements is cost reduction. I put an extra soon on it though; it is also about driving up the cost to the recipient. That reduces utilization, reduces access to health care, and reduces health. That in turn reduces the existential value of our society. We are all diminished by there efforts.
As a solution, I recommend single payer universal health care nationwide.
6
It both amuses and enrages me when able people pontificate on the benefits of work, and that disabled and chronically ill people should "contribute" to society. As someone with Stage 4 cancer, I know well that most of my friends are unable to work because of fatigue, pain, and other side effects. But they contribute to their communities through their families, churches, friendships, their very existence as human beings who live while suffering. The idea that someone is valuable enough to support medically only if they contribute to the economy is grotesque and inhumane.
12
Someone further up the thread actually wrote "if you don't work you're not a human being".
I'm horrified by the proportion of commenters on this article who agree with the premise of making Medicaid recipients work for their benefits so that they can be seen to be "deserving" them.
2
Government largess to needy citizens, whether Medicare, Food Stamps, or direct payments, are part of a social contract. A contract by definition has two sides. So requiring work in return for benefits in cases where people are able to work is perfectly reasonable. It is also smart policy for maintaining such programs because taxpayers tend to favor programs they see as balanced as opposed to simply handouts.
3
Well, sure we must make people's lives miserable or they won't have the incentive to be forced to play the capitalist game. For laissez-fairists "there is no free lunch," except of course for those who simply inherit in the grand style (who "take the trouble to be born") or those who simply "clip stock coupons" and juggle paper wealth instead of actually doing the hard, productive, everyday work of making useful goods and services for others for little more than subsistence wages -- the fate of the vast American majority who labor. Our plutocrats and their pols "knows the price of everything but the value of nothing" (O. Wilde).
10
I can't believe we are having this discussion, nor can I understand the attitude of the NYT. Instead of a full-throated endorsement of health care as an unconditional right in an advanced society the Times chose to emphasize the negative consequences of current proposals for work requirements under Medicaid. So does that mean that if we found a more palatable way of denying millions of poor people health care that it would be all right? Does that mean that we, the American people, do not believe health care should be an unconditional right? After reading many of the comments, I'm afraid that might be so. I am shocked. I know that most on the cynical right are against health care for all, but progressives, too? What kind of society have we become?
10
Education and health care are better viewed as an investment rather than an expense.
19
Yes. That is how education and health care are viewed in every other first world nation.
5
The question could be asked:
"Should the fruits of one persons labor be taken by force of law to provide for the health care of another?"
Is this true if the disease is a direct results of a person's continuing behavior (i. e. diabetes and obesity / sedentary life style, repeated drug rehab or liver damage due to continuing alcohol use, ... .
If so under what circumstances and to which degree. Suppose the recipient spends $4000 / year on smoking, or has a premium phone plan, and a top tiered cable package, or spends $100 per week, or money to spend on drugs?
Also, what is the tradeoff between cost effective care, and the best care in terms of generic drugs vs, the latest drugs, colonoscopy vs, stool sample, ...?
John
How about surgeries like gender reassignment."
3
DEAR jOHN, what is the cost of having humans pooping puking spreading disease and dying in the street, when for a few bucks extra we could help them and have a civil society that does not have people dying in the streets. I suggest you take a walk, get out of your car, see what is happening to those who either by fate or circumstance, are the downtrodden. We as a caring civil SOCIETY can understand that it is in our best interest to care for all..
20
For every Marcus Welby -- a generous, caring family doctor -- we have many Tom Prices -- cold-hearted business people in the profession for the lucre.
Health care, like religion, should never be a for-profit enterprise. One purpose of government is to promote the general welfare.
Human need is covered by that insurance.
10
Occupy,
Fortunately, we have more Marcus Welbys than Tom Prices.
It’s the Tom Prices, Rand Pauls and “doctors” like them along with “nurses” like Diane Black who find their way into Congress and state legislatures who are greedy, self-serving and devoid of compassion.
1
Of course this is how America will be with any GOP majority in Congress that prefers giving tax cuts to those who don't need them and taking away health benefits from the poor. If only the poor were educated and voted for their own interests, instead of paying attention to Congressional and Presidential hoaxsters who don't care about anyone except their large donors and themselves.
6
As a Canadian, it amazes me that this question is even raised. As noted in several of the comments, the US is the ONLY country in the developed world that does not offer health care as a right to every resident. Please excuse me, but I seriously question how "developed" the US actually is.
30
Thank you. I always welcome the views of Canadians about their healthcare system. You are lucky that you have it. You're right, the U.S. is not the exceptional country it likes to pretend it is.
4
It’s a third world country. Run by Oligarchs.
3
Let's start with ... I am a Canadian living in Canada. Now that I have that out of the way, I can say that although we do have a number of glaring deficiencies in our universal health care system, for the most part it works great and I for one am quite happy with it. I work as an engineer for a major American company and could easily move to the US and probably make a higher salary and pay substantially less tax. I would be able to live in a bigger house and have more to spend but you know what ... no thanks. I spent last night in an emergency ward as the result of a secondary infection related to a surgical procedure I recently underwent. Looking around me in the ER waiting room there were some reasonably affluent people as well as the poorest of the poor. Yet regardless of our various maladies and income levels, we were all receiving excellent medical attention and were shown equal respect and compassion from the medical staff. I simply could not live in a wealthy country knowing that the most vulnerable in that society were treated so poorly. I am hoping that someday that Americans join those of us in Canada and the rest of the Western world and realize that proper universal healthcare is good for a nation and something that you can be proud of. I am an atheist who still thinks there are some excellent points in Christian scripture and one that I particularly like is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
21
The problem is that the struggling NON-POOR have NO RIGHT to health care. They envy the people on Medicaid and the GOP feeds on that. Coverage has to be universal or Americans will still be fighting over crumbs.
14
You got it, exactly! What I don't get is why they vote for the Republicans then.
Probably because they think they will never get sick, I can think of no other reason. And if they do, they die and can't vote anymore.
That's got to be the GOPs calculus.
1
all of us deserve to have access to health care. If we lived in Europe we wouldn’t have to answer such a question. In the United States of America, it depends on who you work for. Don’t have health care? Run for Congress.
12
A discussion of whether people have a "right" to "healthcare" is extraordinarily simplistic. What is a right? What constitutes healthcare? Does it include preventive? How will we deliver and pay for universal healthcare? Do people with the right to healtchare have an obligation to comply with strictures on healthy lifestyles (diet, consumption, exercise)? How will yhose lifestyle regulations be shaped and enforced?
Additionally, many posts here are making flawed national comparisons, especially to Europe. I think that's unproductive. My family and I have lived in Scotland, the US, and (for a long time) in Austria. Consumer-level healthcare is best in Austria, with a single nongovernment payer, but research, innovation, and HC entrepreneurship are least well supported in Austria. Although one of the first heart transplants was done at the klinic we used, my friends who were teaching doctors and professors there believed quite unequivocally that their research and related innovations were completely suffocated in Austria - they sold IP to American firms to get it developed.
So... this discussion is flawed by a simplistic construal of "right" and "healthcare" and these comments are somewhat silly in their typically-American shallow understanding of other countries' systems and the complex tradeoffs.
6
I think that basic consumer health care- and freedom from the financial fear of becoming ill — are more important than the bankbooks of medical researchers. And if you look at, say, the history of the Sackler family and OxyContin, you can see the downside to a profit-motivated industry,
5
Geoffrey, You're not contradicting me - I assume that's clear - you're elaborating on why a simplistic discussion seems satisfying but leaves us no where. You prefer access over innovation. I might, too, although I'd say that we are at a point in medicine at which great breakthroughs for cures and quality of life are really close (for example, in "personalized" cancer treatments using genetic markers to target malignant cells while sparing healthy cells - that will be transformative and it is nearing approval and scaling). You might prefer that everyone be forced to eat healthy, too, and that we outlaw smoking. I'd be for at least one of those regulations. But my point was and is: a bunch of Times commentators saying "Well, Europe is so great, they do it this way or that (and they have such wonderful trains and bread)" is like sitting in sophomore sociology - they've figured out what the professor responds to but they sure aren't solving any problems.
Most Americans believe that people, including poor people, should have access to health CARE. Health insurance is a financial product intended to protect the assets of the insured against being consumed if high cost medical bills are incurred. More importantly to Obama, they are a guarantee to big medicine that they can raise profits by the prospect that the government and insurers will pay any big bills incurred.
Medicaid is available retroactively for poor people who incur high medical costs. There is no benefit to the administrative expense of signing up able boded childless adults. It is noteworthy that the law school student would not be required to work because he is attending school and the other individuals are not able bodied, and would be exempt from the requirement that they work, seek employment or volunteer.
Those "paperwork" problems that will result in people losing benefits are the consequence of allowing people who are working in the cash economy to self report their income, even when it is obvious they are understating their income. The government, including welfare examiners, has access to wages reported by businesses. Someone working for McDonald's or Walmart or the corner bodega does not have to periodically submit "paperwork" to the welfare department to verify that they are working. Only people illegally evading taxes and their employers have a problem with proving they are working.
1
Not true. Everyone must report wages and if you get one week of overtime you can be cut off. It is designed to be onerous and humiliating.
3
The issue is that not all things are commodities. Is health care a "right"? Let's go to the little phrase "...among these rights are life, liberty..." Denial of health care is the same as denial of life. We are a nation, not a conglomeration. If you don't want to contribute to the health of our union--maybe it's time you leave; like an abusive spouse who blames others for their own incapacity to care for others maybe it is time you were cast out.
7
Food, Shelter. education, health care, safety are the basic jobs of government to supply. At what level one can argue but survival level is necessary for a strong society.
10
What is behind this move to restrict the number of people who benefit from social safety-net programs is a smug, cynical attitude toward the disadvantaged, engendered by those privileged few who have mistaken God's grace for God's favor.
14
Of course poor people have a right to health care - everybody (rich or poor) does. The editor is really asking another question - do poor people have a right to free health care. I would like to say they do, but how do you go about implementing this policy without it being abused? How do you identify those that qualify as "poor"? Social-safety nets certainly benefit those in need, and we certainly need these programs for them, but they are also taken advantage of by those who are not.
You do it by having universal health care systems like all the advanced industrial countries of the world
.
6
If Medicaid is to continue, I'd like to see some life-style requirements attached to benefits. To see someone decimate their own bodies through outrageously bad habits and then to be forced to pay to try to salvage some semblance of good health for that person is a jagged little pill. Of course that means a highly intrusive government, but that is what you get when you turn to the state for care. No one in their right mind gives money away with no strings attached.
2
We can discount the views of an Obama-appointed politician in a black robe. How any BHO/WJC appointee would rule on such a matter is essentially a foregone conclusion as, to such folks, politics, not the law, matters.
And since when is expecting people to work "punitive"?
In answer to the question posed in the headline: of course not. No one has a "right" to anything someone else must work to produce. If one has a "right" to health care, then one can assert that against the MD, RN, or hospital; one NEVER has a "right" to taxpayer funds.
There is perhaps no more compelling human desire than to freeload. The constituency for the free lunch is essentially without limit. Heck, the entire Dem Party is based upon taxing "them" to give "you" free stuff. What's the incentive to actually work if you have a "right" to essentially everything necessary for life? Sooner, rather than later, a system in which everything is "free" will collapse under the stress of leeches.
Assuming the merits of taxpayer-funded "compassion", it needs must come with a healthy, reciprocal does of individual responsibility. Even socialists aver, "from each according to his abilities", no? Well, expecting people to earn some portion of their "rights" is hardly unreasonable, eh? Very few are the number of people who can do NOTHING, but legion are the numbers of folks who aspire to doing precisely that.
2
If you read the article most people on Medicaid work except the old, the young, the disabled or caregivers. We need to make the employers pay for health care for all employees. Why should I subsidize the Walton family because they refuse to pay decent wages? What happens during the next recession when people can not find work? Do they go without food, shelter and healthcare. What a country!
4
You make an assertion that nobody has any obligation to share what they have earned or made. There could be such an argument if one does this alone but not from any effort that society enables. If one benefits from living and working with the means provided by others, the obligations go far beyond the exchange of labor or the works of one’s own efforts alone.
How about we make wealthy people pee in a cup and prove they are working before they get a tax break? How about we stop federal tax incentives for employer based healthcare? How about we make poor people choose between healthcare, rent and eating?
What kind of sickos are we as a country?
11
We live in an Evil Empire, are destroying ourselves and working on the total oblivion of human life on the planet. Won't let other nations breast-feed? Medicaid can't be Medicaid any longer? So what else is new? Visitors from another planet may come here, see no life, and wonder what happened to us. "Looks like corporate greed . . . ," they'll say.
marthastephens.wordpress.com
2
Medicaid, which is rife with fraud, cost tax payers $600 billion last year. Medicine is a noble profession, but costs need to be reigned in.
1
Reining in costs would be most easily effectuated by removing the insurance companies from the equation. The system we have now includes medical professionals, insurance companies, and patients. If we were to institute Medicare for all, funded by the taxes we pay, the insurance companies would lose their ability to jack up prices willy-nilly, the need to hire extra staff whose entire job is making sure bills are properly coded for the insurance claims. The insurance companies have hijacked the medical profession and have turned it into the bureaucratic nightmare it has become.
10
James - medicare, which is not even the subject of this editorial - is rife with fraud? How so? If you are referring to people like the republican governor of FL who had to repay $1.8 billion with a b to medicare you're right. But fraud at the individual level is almost nonexistent.
2
I come from the era where you couldn’t carry $5.00 worth of groceries out of the store in one bag. Ditto for healthcare. A visit to the GP was out of pocket change, as were prescriptions that may have been needed. Insurance was available much cheaper than the two-month mortgage payment it costs today. What happened? The industry became a hideous immoral monster with an insatiable diet for cash. Even my free Medicare and ancillary supplemental coverage's cost 14% of my gross income. That has to stop, no matter who pays for it.
7
There is no debate. Healthcare is a human right.
The only reason we're 'debating' this is that the wealthy don't want to cough up for their share of universal care. As a result, the cost burden falls on the middle class, fomenting resentment against those unable to pay.
If the rich did cough up -- and the profiteering by pharma-&-friends were reined in -- everyone would have care, the middle and lower classes wouldn't be dumped on and at each others' throats, and we wouldn't be digging ourselves out from under horse manure about 'deservedness' and 'rights'.
10
I disagree, as do a not-insignificant number of others. So it appears there is a debate after all.
2
Let me respectfully put forth some situations.
A right is something everyone deserves. A privilege is something some people do not deserve.
In order to defend the position that healthcare is not a right, you need to give me at least one example of a child to whom you would refuse treatment because he/she can't pay doesn't 'deserve' it.
If not, then you must at least concede that healthcare is a child's right. And from there it's not far to see that it's really everyone's right.
The solution to an overburdened healthcare system is not to deny people care. It's to relieve the burden. Where, as is happening here, those few with the vast proportion of money are holding out, this can be easily done. And it is being done all over the world.
1
We have a government with all three branches controlled by grifters.
It’s a bit ironic that our leaders don’t want to pay taxes and don’t really care about their fellow Americans.
To them it’s “survival of the fittest”.
They are not leaders. They are predators who have betrayed the country and the principles it stands for.
8
Just reading through the comments and my comment is no one gets it. Medical Care and health insurance are two different animals. No one is denied medical care, it is how do you pay. Then when you decide how to pay, what next? I'm all for universal care....tax it through the payroll system at say 6% and have the employer match 6%. But then don't whine when those who have, choose to go to the Mayo Clinic such as John McCain and doctors decide the payment system from a universal system is not good enough and leave to go into private practice. This is where we are headed and the sooner we get there the more billions we will save. That being said when we get there don't whine when you are denied the Mayo Clinic.
We should all be on an HSA, high deductible plan. Lets say a $2500 Deductible and $10K co pay before insurance kicks in. This way, it might be costly but not catastrophic. In addition all physicians & hospitals should immediately have to post their prices for elective surgery. This will help but isn' the end solution.
To make it all work, we need to make sure all congressional members are using the same system. At that point, they will then realize how badly they have screwed the citizens and put their minds together to aide in the solution.
1
You are sadly mistaken if you believe that no one in this country is denied medical care because they can't afford it.
5
Republican absolutely hate poor people. Kind of ironic since much of the trump "base" is reportedly poor and will be hurt by the policies that the repubs want to implement. Any bets on whether that will change the minds of sycophantic trumpers?
7
I think it's more accurate to say that Republicans blame poor people for their situation and don't trust them to do what is required to better their situation.
What about slackers who have wealthy families who pay for their health care? Is a slacker poor person any less deserving in a moral context? This policy just does not seem to be morally justified. The only rational purpose it serves is to not spend money on strangers.
3
Let me crassly reword the headline. "Do Poor People have a right to Force Others to Work for Them?"
I think we settled this very violently in the 1860's. You dno't have the right to force anyone to work.
4
I'm going to ask a difficult question. Isn't better to have tax payers paying with the help of employer for their own insurance? Ther' s a lot of well meaning rich and wealthy giving money to scholarship funds to help get kids get into colleges. What about the trades?
All over the news there's shortages of airline pilots, truck drivers, plumbers, welders and mechanics to name a few. What about helping people into those jobs. I know college is more of an achievement to some people but trade schools will get a lot of people out of poverty and provide a good living. Trade schools are not cheap and public schools don't provide it anymore.
1
If healthcare is a right, then it must be socialized. The gov't will need to pay for it the same way it pays for Defense, through taxes. To have this right, able-bodied people will need to work and pay taxes in order to have access to healthcare. This also means that the gov't will have a responsibility to ensure employment.
We have a moral responsibility to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves, but that is it.
2
America has a moral but factually erroneous fixation on making work a necessary prerequisite for receiving government assistance designed to ward off impoverishment. The American “welfare” system fails for two major reasons. One, many of these benefits carry irrationally strict income and asset eligibility rules which perversely force recipients who properly attempt to work their way out of the welfare system, for example at a retail store, to leave it before they have earned enough money to fund their living expenses. Many of these recipients lose their housing which forces them into an impossible dilemma that promotes the illicit behavior Republicans naively pounce on: work and lose the apartment or lie about work earnings and keep the apartment a little longer until a flush roommate or a better-paying job comes along. However, even if these counterproductive eligibility rules could be relaxed to give indigents a realistic shot at escaping poverty, in most cases they still stand to fail. This is because of reason number two: there are simply not enough jobs at the bottom of our economy that pay a living wage. I’ll keep it simple. In any state, can a former welfare recipient earn a living from a full-time retail sales job? No, they cannot and this makes the welfare work requirement immoral as well as irrational. America must seriously consider a universal basic income and living wages for all jobs on the vocational spectrum.
5
According to the article, 10 million working age Medicaid recipients don’t work, most of whom are caregivers to elderly or children - hence, if they don’t work they are recipients of the whole buffet cart of government payouts from cradle to grave. Medicaid is the tip of the benefits iceberg.
This is how the permanent underclass was born and grows. This weakens our country in every way imaginable. Why better yourself or your children if the government subsidizes your existence?
I use to be a Democrat but no longer. The Democratic Party doesn’t support the poor, it promotes poverty.
1
It would seem to me that caregiving IS work.
2
The wealthiest country in the world cannot keep its population healthy.
That is an interesting statement, is it not? It's wrong, of course. We can afford to do virtually anything we want. But conservatives have convinced many of our citizens that it benefits more from putting a $4 trillion war on a credit card than from educating or caring for our population. In any intelligent, benevolent society that would be seen as a crime.
7
I live in the UK where healthcare is free at the point of delivery. I have lived and know people who live in the US It appalls me to see in the USA people managing with what are trivial medical problems in this day and age (like cataracts for instance) because they don't qualify for medicare and can't afford the money for an operation.
The NHS has its faults (and waiting times for elective surgery is one). The current wait time is 18 weeks, or you can pay (or take out private medical insurance) and get it as soon as you like.
Surely, healthcare should not be discretionary based on a person's ability to pay or to work?
9
I support fair and access healthcare, but believe all able bodied adults should contribute what they can to help keep this nation a wonderful place to live.
You are entitled to water, electricity, sewage and probably internet in some places for about $200/month. If you can't afford it, there are programs. Health care is necessary for fewer of us, but when you need it, you need it. The cost of health care insurance in open market is probably $1000+ per month for an individual, unattainable for many. Clean water is more useful for 90% of people (Kalamazoo MI) who are healthy at any given time. Are there cheaters? probably, but that isn't the point. Medical care is too expensive, is not popular for young people who have low risk, and does not have supply/demand market forces that keep prices in line with necessities, like food and water (Epi-Pen), so insurance doesn't work well. Heck, healthy workers are losing, so unhealthy people lose even more. If you could fix an arthritic hip in a 50 y/o carpenter he could go back to work at his skill or he could work as a Walmart greater for less money. Why don't people do the math, and figure out the problem and then solve it as though we were a community? Why is that so hard?
4
It would seem that conservatives presume that when a wealthy person or someone insured with a non-Medicaid insurer stops working until they want to return to work it’s up to them but not anyone who requires Medicaid to afford medical treatment. Why would that be? Because their medical costs are beyond their means and the states have no means to help or because they consider them a burden upon society that should be eliminated by refusing them anymore support? I think it’s triage by social value determined by who pays for their care. Life is unfair and then you die. There is no law obliging anyone to think with an enlightened view with regard to self interest.
Let's ignore that this might be out of spite (or dominance) and focus on the argument some people keep trying to make: that this is purely about money. Republicans don't want to pay someone else's health insurance. Notwithstanding an ignorance of how insurance actually works, this shows a remarkable lack of understanding of how their own towns work, because a lot of government works like insurance. When a non-insured person falls down sick or dead on the street, what does a Republican think actually happens? This person receives care from the police, the fire department, and EMS. The person is brought to a hospital or mortuary and either patched up or prepared for burial. If the person dies, s/he may be placed in a potter's field maintained by the local government. All of these services are paid for. Guess how.
By denying people access to basic health care, Republicans think they're going to lower their taxes? No, by denying healthcare access all they've done is deny a person the opportunity to be a productive, contributing member of society, shortchanging us all.
Republicans can say that certain groups don't deserve various services, but it's never about money because what they want actually causes all of us to lose money.
3
A great many people on Medicare cannot work. That is why they are on Medicare. So to require them to work in order to receive Medicare is insane.
3
I think it's pretty simple. Freeloading should be discouraged. The government isn't here to give you a permanent paid vacation.
Like if you borrowed money from your brother, you'd do your best to spend it prudently and pay it back if you had the means. The principle is the same if you take more from the government than you put in.
If you are healthy and strong enough to work, you should try your best.
If you can't work a job that requires physical labor, then do your best to find a desk job.
If you are sick and can't work at all, then get better first. Then pay back what you took from out of the system the best you can.
1
Most large families in no way pay enough property taxes to educate their kids at 10 grand a year. So are they too free loading?
2
"So as officials consider the future of Medicaid, they must ask themselves: Is this how America is going to be?"
No. This is how America IS. As we offer thanks to our men and women in uniform, do we stop to ask ourselves exactly what it is that they are fighting for? What it is exactly that makes people proud to be American? Because it cannot be our sense of charity, fairness and equality for all...that just simply does not exist. Callous, uncaring, selfish and loud. That's what we are on average. Those who have, run the show. Then they turn the rest of us against each other as they rob us blind. We have a government for, by and of the wealthy. The rest of us have the freedom to starve to death or die of easily preventable or curable diseases so long as we don't inconvenience them.
7
Nothing is perfect. There IS a lingering suspicion among those who go to work every day that many others have figured out how to game the system. People who work for me tell me this: My black gardener used to listen to what he called my "liberal babble" and it infuriated him. "They sell their food stamps and buy drugs," he would inform me. My friend's Brazilian housekeeper is also angry; she lives in an immigrant community and sees the men there hanging out all day "doing nothing" as she drives off to work. They are still there when she returns. So this is not a one-sided issue; there ARE plenty of cheats, and it is IS expensive to ferret them out. But if we don't--of we allow the perception to continue that, as a nation, we don't really care about fairness, then those who do go to work and contribute to society and hold their own will be getting more and more resentful of the freeloaders--and have been feeling that resentment for a long time: hence, Trump's attempt at a solution.
The still unanswered basic question: Does anyone have a human right to essential health care?
All the civilized countries in the world (except one) have answered this question yes.
2
The premise of a "right to health care" or a right to anything is absurd. Let's stop using those words in setting up that premise or question.
A "right" by definition is some inherent rule that comes from god or is a fact of physics or nature. I'm an atheist and a trained scientist so a health care right is an absurd concept. What people apparently mean is "should human society PROVIDE health care to all. That simply must be decided by the society and in a democratic society that means lots of debate. America's crazed Ayn Rand pure "free market" capitalism is an absurdity to begin with so we have to dump that and reorganized our minds for more realistic social organizations. This is the historic constant struggle for a workable political-social society that allows maximum freedom, fairness and liberty. Good luck with that but as mentioned here, many other societies in the world are happier than the people in the USA, have long vacations, "free" health care, etc. We are talking about the Human Development Index (HDI) where the best and happiest countries have high life expectancy, high educational levels, high per capital income, etc.
The “top ten” countries with the highest HDI, in order, are Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Singapore, Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland and Canada. Some day, united states may become a "happier" place to live; its current Ayn Rand madness and vicious capitalism and general political corruption will be majors barriers to that.
1
We insure, or try to insure, the elderly, veterens and the poor.....some of the most high risk groups that might be in need of medical care. Isn’t it a no brainer to add the most healthy population to that pool and raise taxes to pay for everyone? Then use that power to negotiate medical costs for things like drugs? Your health does not fit the free market model.....you can’t say no thanks when getting a heart attack or shop around for the cheapest ambulance.
6
This is the issue that compassionate, justice-loving Americans need to be marching about. And we need to keep marching until we get what every other wealthy, capitalist, democratic country in the world has had for generations.
5
“The record shows that 95,000 people would lose Medicaid coverage,” Judge James Boasberg wrote in his decision. “And yet the Secretary paid no attention to that deprivation.”
To the contrary, Your Honor; I believe that Sec. Azar paid a great deal of attention to that deprivation. That was why HHS signed off on the plan. One of the underlying themes of the Administration and Congress has been punishing the poor. This program fits right in with that theme.
4
"...the question of whether health care is a human right or an earned privilege — and, if the latter, how “earned” should be defined."
And concerning the former: What exactly is essential to health care in the context of human rights?
Kentucky plans to fight the ruling despite the details that show that it is money poorly spent. This necessarily leads to only one possible conclusion. The proponents only want to serve the wealthy. The less than are unworthy. The GOP truly does hate the plebeians, and wishes to push them out of existence.
No, there is no "right" to health care. I don't see the fuss over asking able bodied persons to work. It's one thing if you can not work but if you can work you should work.
Yes. Is the very simple answer. I am in Public Health, and I assure you, it is much cheaper in the long run to provide everyone with health care than it is to deny it to some sections of the population care, and then have them come into our hospital Emergency Departments for conditions that should have been treated in a clinic. In this case, as with vaccinations, the general health of the overall population benefits everyone. America will never become "great again" as long as this administration continues to float these incredibly ill-conceived ideas. Denying health care to those who need it, separating children from parents, allowing pollutants into food and water, denying climate change, etc., ad nauseam - as the list grows the we move from stupidity to outright maliciousness.
5
No one has a right to health care, just as no one should have the right to profit off of human suffering.
This problem could be solved much more effectively by removing the parasites (health insurers, the pharmaceutical mafia, and the entire system of quite profitable "not for profit" hospitals) that enrich themselves on the backs of average Americans.
2
The world has long recognized, for good reason, that there cannot be a "right" to be rescued. Such a right would be open-ended, and the claim that someone SHOULD have rescued you and not done whatever else they were doing at the time is easy to make and hard to prove. Lifeguards are PAID to rescue, and so swimmers at a beach with lifeguards have a right to be rescued by them. But there is no right to have lifeguards there in the first place.
Medicaid is socialized rescue. To say it's a right is to say that the resources, financial and human, must be made available, whatever other useful purpose they might fill. That's nuts. It is fine to LEGISLATE free healthcare, and it may be stupid to condition it on an impossible work requirement, and Federal law may preclude states from imposing such a condition as the court found in the reported case, but none of that implies some sort of "human right" to healthcare. I support Medicaid as a good use of our resources, but not as an entitlement.
The inclusion of the term “punitive work requirements” tells you everything you need to know about this editorial. Why not consider that work can be an “opportunity, learning experience, or character builder”? No, keep pushing the redistributive fantasy that being given something is better than earning it.
1
For conservatives these days, cruelty to the less fortunate is not a side effect of policy. It is the POINT of the policy.
Holding health care hostage to work, wealth or some other qualification for sick, poor or old people is an embarrassment to the United States and far out of step with any other modern, rich country.
I don't know what we're making America, but it is very far from great.
3
The majority of nursing home patients are on Medicaid. There is a tsunami of baby boomers heading down this path, as most will deplete all their assets prior to dying.
This is the reason for the Medicaid "cuts" proposed by Ryan, Trump et al. They need to support unending foreign wars and unending tax cuts for their wealthy masters. So Medicaid has to go.
If you don't believe it, just visit a nursing home and speak to family members. This slow motion train wreck is unfolding before our eyes. Even if they cut Medicaid to zero, the same number of elderly sick are going to be with us. Then what?
I believe you mean Medicare, not Medicaid. Medicare pays for the elderly and is generated by money withheld from salaries, similar to Social Security. I naively believe Trump and his cronies won't have the nerve to cut Medicare.
Medicaid is for people who cannot afford the full costs of insurance and healthcare. I am pleased my home state, Connecticut, has a program called HUSKY and especially benefits our state's indigent children, despite our state's budget problems. I am not so naive as to believe Paul Ryan and his cronies and successors won't try to break Medicaid.
When you run out of assets, the nursing home is paid by Medicaid. Go to a nursing home and visit. Medicare does not pay for nursing homes. Believe me, that is why they need to dismantle it.
When you say "Right to Health Care" .. you actually mean "Right to FREE Health Care" .. is that correct ?
If yes, there is no such right in the constitution as it currently stands. So in order to make FREE Health Care a "right", you will have to try to amend the constitution.
Rights are innate and cannot be something that is "given" (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness), only taken away (hopefully only with due process.) Making a good or service a "right" forces the provider of that good or service to provide it on demand, which in effect enslaves them (whether or not they are "fairly" compensated.)
The article did not address the question raised in the headline.
1
So here is the deal; Deeply embedded in the "American Character" that shaped our culture is the idea that any "handouts" are long-term disincentives leading to dependency and therefore inherently wrong even if needed in the short term. Worse, the attitude towards programs like Medicaid is shaped by the incorrect belief that they mainly benefit minorities and reflect widespread racism that has become much more overt in the Trump era. This attitude is reflected in the work requirement issue and is ironic since Conservatives can't resolve the inherent conflict they have between racism driven desires to cut Medicaid on the one hand and commitments to fund it to fight the Opioid epidemic, a predominantly white issue.
Having said that, the authors of this editorial are as biased as the States they criticize; for example, The ideas that work enhances health and health is required for productivity are not mutually exclusive, they are BOTH correct.
Finally, an Editorial in a leading broadsheet should be devoid of grammatical sloppiness;"nearly half of that savings" is incorrect English, given that "savings" is plural.
1
All people deserve decent health care. The GOP simply despises poor people the most.
5
Its funny, in the US we are bombarded with all manner of preventative health care fixes. From what sort of exercise regimen is the right kind, what foods to eat, not eat, the correct amounts, even when to eat them. There are mountains of supplements to gobble down. Sleep and not-sitting have become the latest in marketable ways to sell good/better health to US consumers. We're assaulted by celebrity experts telling us what and how to live, eat, exercise and spend our down time - all to make us feel better, perform better, and gain some preventative benefits. Quinoa, acai, etc, are all miracle foods that if you're not eating, you're killing yourself.
Yet, when it comes to actual Medical health care policies and practices, real preventative medicine is denied us outright. You have to have an illness or affliction to get a test, or see a professional. Yet due to the demands of work, and family, and absurd health insurance restrictions - people put off care when they are sick, or in the early stages of an injury, illness or disease.
We've been convinced - by the aforementioned Health Care Marketeers (unregulated profiteers) - that getting sick is now the patients fault. Due to some mistake made in not doing or not taking one of their palliatives.
We've been sold, that being poor is our fault too. If you're not pulling hard enough on those frayed bootstraps, you're a slacker. If you live where the water is dirty, its your fault!
Being poor and sick is your fault! You failed.
8
Meanness, of the sort similar to that of denying parachutes to WWI American fighter pilots on the grounds that, given the alternative, they'd choose to jump rather than fight the German pilots who, paradoxically, were issued chutes. That streak of cruelty runs throughout our history. The forced separation of children from their parents is a more recent example along with the attempts to withhold health care from the 'undeserving' poor. Their are, generally, a nasty lot, the members of the GOP and similar Dems like Clinton who are more subtle in their sadism, although for Bill I think it was more in the line of opportunism. Yes, we do have a fight ahead of us.
6
Why are the rich rich and the poor poor? Certainly it is not by choice. If the poor could work and get rich, I believe they would mostly choose to work. Why are the sick sick? (Rich or poor?) Who among the sick would not chose to get well? This is not about choosing, it is about fate: what does life deal us: brains, college education, good job, good health, money, poverty, not good health, mental problems, little education and the lack of skills to make a living. Who chooses this? Nobody I have ever met.
Our country was founded on the principal of equality of rights and the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Surely, as in most developed countries, this right includes EQUALITY in the right to health care provided by the Government that was established to insure the rights.
Selfish people embraced slavery because it made them rich and they fought a war to preserve it. The same kind of people embrace limiting universal health care in America.
5
"They must also be familiar with the evidence indicating that punitive work requirements are ineffective." So the esteemed Editorial Board writes! One problem is that this paper has lost literally all credibility. It toes the democrat line. It covers up for all the sins democrats commit. It lies directly or indirectly by simply excluding, by simply not reporting what needs to be reported -- if damage to the progressive left will result. And now this. It's simple. People who can work should work -- if they wish to partake of the largess of hard-working taxpayers. This, of course, doesn't mean the caregiver embracing her ailing husband. This, of course, doesn't mean the so mentally compromised person that he cannot work. If "one in five" Americans are on Medicaid, this new requirement is long overdue. And this isn't a conservative vs. progressive issue, as this paper framed it. It's just basic common sense. So deeply and irreparably compromised is this paper, that The Editorial Board can't even present this simple and important issue honestly.
2
The one in five on Medicaid would include the elderly in nursing homes. I don't know what fraction are the elderly but it's needs to be remembered in our discussion.
4
Sick people who can perform work that employers need done amount to how many of those who are sick? People who cannot do their jobs increase the work that must be done by others. Anyone who works where a new and inexperienced employee has started work knows this. The sick person may just not be able to actually contribute useful employment even if employed. What happens in a recession and the sick are let go first? They lose their jobs and their medical care? Do employers have to keep them on and let go better performing employees? The details of this policy just look a lot more complicated than the sound byte slogan policy statement.
2
Anytime even one human life is equated to a financial value, all humanity is cheapened.
5
Unfortunately the lasting legacy of America's Puritan Heritage is that being poor is considered a moral failing, Poor people receiving benefits are considered lazy spongers on society these work requirements are only the latest in a long line of restrictions/humiliations that our sanctimonious legislators have come up with to make a poor person's miserable life even more miserable.
3
We regularly see questions in the form of “Is such-and-such a human right?”, as illustrated here by the title, “Do poor people have a right to health care” and later “It also reflects persistent national ambivalence over the question of whether health care is a human right”. Questions so put are ill-formed because they have no true-false answer. Rights are not something floating around loose in the universe in general or naturally embedded in earthlings in particular. What we call “rights” come only from an established governmental authority with the power to enact and enforce them. Notwithstanding the Declaration of Independence assertion that “all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”, history has shown throughout its duration that men have and continue to be alienated from any rights whatever. Examples abound, but perhaps none better than the Nazi treatment of Jews living in Germany and other countries under its domination before and during World War II. This point is not central to the message of the editorial, but it very misleadingly suggests a reality of “rights” for which there is simply no empirical evidence and in doing so gets its message started off in the wrong direction.
Do these people ever actually read their Bibles?
And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
8
It really is mind boggling to realize how the likes of the billionaire big donor Kochs and right-wing Republican Party have managed to convince voters in much of the Civil War celebrating South, the so-called "heartland" Midwest, and out here in the Wild West where we now live.
Shouldn't we be asking why Americans can't have affordable health insurance, which every advanced nation offers its citizens as a "human right"?
Why are we, the richest country int he world, the only advanced nation that views health insurance coverage as a "privilege" and affordable only for those working people lucky enough to have well-paying jobs with benefits.
Like some of the worst money-grabbing, merciless characters in a Charles Dickens' novel, the Republicans ironically demand that poor people with disabilities must work for their health insurance, while GOP politicians bask in the secure glory of excellent, taxpayer-funded health insurance for themselves and their families.
But we can't have universal health care coverage like all those "democratic socialist" countries in the advanced states in Europe, Canada, & elsewhere because it would be "too expensive" for our national budget. After all, we have by far the highest defense budget in the world, so we do have our priorities.
The person who will beat Trump and the merciless right-wing GOP in 2020 will be the person who can bring this country back to sanity and convince us rediscover common sense & human decency.
6
Keeping this discussion in the realm of "rights" weakens the argument. Rather, we as a society ought to ask ourselves what we value. Do we value the ability of an oligarch to but a yacht 100 feet longer than the one he already has? Or, how about the ability to buy a second (or third or fourth...) summer home. Or, how about the ability of a family to have a car for every driver in the house--am I the only person who remembers how big a deal it was when people started shifting to a two-car household?
When you have a right to something the argument becomes adversarial, and unfortunately the most powerful often wins. In the US, as the rabid right weakens the democratic process more and more, power is economic wealth. Rather than trying to separate an oligarch from his or her third summer home, I would like them to explain how many people ought to give up healthcare in exchange for the house. And yes, how many peoples' healthcare ought to be sacrificed to that the average family can afford three or four cars?
4
MY dear PJM, memories are short. The last tiime the Left sought to limit yacht building, the result was the loss of jobs of thousands upon thousands of people employed to make and equip them. The Left's failure to understand the basics of capitalism and how it raises all boats is the source of most disagreement in this nation.
I very rarely respond to replies, but you make a good point. So, what of the power asymmetries? Capitalism does not easily or automatically consider equity. Capitalism can be tremendously powerful, but I am not sure where unchecked capitalism leads. I return to me original question--how many peoples' health care is one more summer property worth? Perhaps we are debating the means rather than the end?
I find it difficult to understand how some people would want to deprive the poor of health care, or torture them by placing more restrictions on their access to such care. Why are people unwilling to recognize the pain and struggle that is the plight of so many in low wage jobs?
7
Just because a job is low wage does not mean it does not come with medical benefits.
As with most important arguments, there is truth on both sides of the argument. There is far too much waste of valuable resources in this country for well off people to complain that poor people are coasting or getting something for nothing. Plenty of very well off people have received a lot for nothing in this country. While there are always examples of people abusing the system, I think that the vast majority of people would rather not be ill and need to rely on Medicaid. Besides, it's in everyone's interest to have a healthy and vibrant society.
On the other hand, many, many people living in poverty make little effort to lead healthy lives and look instead to some magic pill to deliver them to good health. Just go to any mall or supermarket and you will see an army of grossly overweight people who probably walk fewer than 300 steps in a day; they are medical cases in progress and ER visits in waiting. Diabetes, cardiac problems, bad knees, hips, and the list goes on and on. They, too, have an obligation to help society by helping themselves out of the chronic illness that keeps them down and out and drains Medicaid. But I also see little effort from that side of the argument; instead, these people seem to think their lot is simply the natural course of life. It is not.
In the end, both sides need to look at these realities and do their part to resolve this rot that is truly bringing America down.
6
RB, I was a hospital based R.N. for 45 years, have known a lot of fat people with bad knees, diabetes, bad hips as well as skinny people with heart problems, bad knees and many more problems, but I have met no one who is happy to be unhealthy.
Slim people are most peoples ideal but some people would never be skim, try as they might, and some people will never be ill; genetics rule, for now.
No one should be denied medical care because of bias be they fat and slow or skinny and sprint.
Medical care is a right for humankind; the Supreme Court has told us so.
212
What I find, RB, is that in fact it is the working class that most complains that others are coasting or getting something for nothing. The working class lives in the neighborhoods of the coasters. I know, because this is among the most common complaints I hear from people who periodically work in my home.
5
But, somehow, the working class never figures out that the "coasters" who are really getting something for nothing are the 0.1-to-10% for whom wealth always seems, somehow to trickle up.
Mysterious, isn't it?
Medicaid as with other welfare programs is worthwhile. However, they should not be regarded as a right. These programs are are willingly offered by the taxpayers who elect our government to administer them.
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Once they are looked upon as "rights", we begin sliding toward the view offered by Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability - to each according to his need."
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That leads eventually to state control of all human activity - economic, political and social.
6
We need to tie minimum wage and medicare health benefits directly to the benefits that Congress receives. Congress should make the minimum wage and receive exactly the same benefits as the poorest of our country. Let all those who rely on the government for their pay and health care sit in the same boat, and we'll make sure they're all equally afloat.
5
Great idea except Congress doesn’t deserve to make minimum wage. They don’t work as hard as the average cashier.
1
I have read a saying that "A liberal is someone who is willing to allow 9 people to abuse the system to ensure that the 10th does not starve; a conservative is someone who is willing to let 9 people starve to ensure that the 10th doesn't abuse the system."
I used to think that was extreme and simplistic; now I'm not sure.
7
Odd that the GOP seems to miss the fundamental point that folks needing Medicaid or the like are often in that position precisely because employment allowing them to afford healthcare is not available. Pseudo-employment in fake jobs won't fix this problem. The GOP could instead focus on the more challenging problem of making decent employment available to their constituency but apparently behaving and speaking in an adult character is no longer a GOP talent.
3
Not only do Republicans NOT miss that fundamental point, Doug, but our President has done and is doing, all he can to increase employment in the non-elite classes. That is what the corporate tax break was about; it is what deregulation is about, and it is what limiting uncontrolled immigration is about.
As a result of these policies, unemployment is lower than it has been in decades for blacks, Hispanics and women.
What I find most disturbing about your post is that either you are unaware of the President's reasons for the above policy decisions, or , worse, you don't even know about them, or haven't connected the dots.
1
@Oxford:
“As a result of [Republican policies of tax cuts, deregulation, and controlled immigration], unemployment is lower than it has been in decades for blacks, Hispanics and women.”
—————————
Where is the credible, verifiable data showing the cause (“Republican policies”) and effect (“unemployment is lower than it has been in decades..”) you claim?
Forget about who has the "right" to healthcare and who "deserves" it. We need universal healthcare and a fully funded public health system for all our sakes.
For now, I have excellent medical coverage. But if the woman who serves me my burger is working while sick, because she fears a huge ER bill and can't afford to take time off, I may need it. If we should experience – and someday we will – a major pandemic, we may pay a huge price for our system of restricting medical care to those who "deserve" it.
Our current system levies a huge 'paper tax' on all of us who have private medical insurance. It's what we pay for bureaucracies dedicated to denying care as often as possible. My wife and I, and a lot of other people in our coverage group, recently had to come up with documentation to prove we are actually married. Now that our insurance company knows that we haven't been 'living in sin' all these years, I can continue to receive medical benefits. I wonder how much that exercise in creative bureaucracy cost.
Then there's the matter of lost productivity due to untreated or undertreated illness. And sick people have a hard time paying their share of taxes.
Can we afford Medicare for All? If you add up all the risks, costs, and potential benefits, it's the current system we can't afford.
6
Medicaid and the social support network, are not so much a privilege, but instead, a necessity for a successful, competitive society. Leaving citizens without support ends up draining the rest. Throughout history, the pattern of hoarding goods by the upper end of the populace compromises the whole. As the pundits predict, it leads to pitchforks and revolution. Compassion is an element of society that needs to be cultivated not repressed.
4
To the Editorial Board:
Why is it a bad thing to ask healthy and able people to work? For anything of value? Why is that a stigma?
Also, it appears that the problem is in the execution not the concept. In fact, you admit that when you use the Montana example of voluntary work for Medicaid. Employment there is up.
Lastly, you do not consider relative employment levels when you compare the results under the various POTUS Bill Clinton, GWB and Trump.
From my viewpoint this is just another liberal diatribe by your Board. Can you please stop that and publish news. News to me is defined as thoughtful, verifiable and balanced stories. Every single article is anti-conservative and anti-POTUS. In my mind, NYT Aja’s become the National Enquirer. I am unimpressed.
2
The truth is that a man who inherited wealth, has morals that make a sewer rat look great, and has never contributed anything positive to the world (sorry but casinos and developments meant to launder money don't count) is now in charge. The reality is that he wants people whom he sees as losers to die already and go broke on the way.
5
I hope you have meds to control that anger and enlist the help of a professional counselor
1
Robots are so much better than people. They don't get sick or old. If they are flawed, defective or worn they can either be repaired or recycled. They have no families or need to belong. They are cost effective.
Healthy people with high IQ's should inherit the earth. With advancements in genetic science we can decide who should live and who should die. No more sick or dumb people messing up our lives. The rich can modify themselves to a state of perfection unseen in human history. They could live forever. They could change gender at will.
It's within our grasp. A utopia where robots do all laborfor a perfect human race. That way humatity could be free to do what we do best. Buying things and smoking weed.
Reducing the population of the world by 99% will also have a positive impact on the climate to. My only regret is I won't live to see it.
Don't believe me? What are you a socialist?
The left its not just for Marxist anymore.
1
Here in MI, our esteemed teabagging legislature has enacted the same rules. Can't wait until someone sues the State over this. 150,000+ stand to lose coverage here in MI if this goes through. I guess the Cult45 followers won't be happy until they're dying in the streets. All out of you-know-whats to give these people.
2
I honestly believe that if they could, the Republicans would revert to a system very akin to Medieval Feudalism, in which a king would rule with absolute power, under "divine right", or course, just to appease the evangelicals.
Under their system, of course, most of us would be peasants and would have almost no rights. There would be gibbets at every crossroads; visual arts would not exist outside of churches, where pictures and statues would be used to tell Bible stories and to terrify people about going to hell.
Conformity was absolutely required, male dominion over women was absolute, most people were superstitious, hyper-religious, and ignorant almost beyond belief. Religion took primacy over science, and the most dangerous person to one's health was the medieval doctor.
There were no pensions, health insurance, or regulations of any kind - simply absolute power wielded by the local lord over secular matters and the Church over religious matters. Burnings for witchcraft were common.
Sounds to me like where we're headed under Trump and the current crop of Republicans.
6
It is not we Republicans who favor the mob removal of statues of our Founding Fathers, Vesuviano, (speaking of the arts), but your side. It is not we who favor government funding of such offensive "art" as the "Piss Christ," but your side.
It is not we who seek conformity of all opinion and speech, but your side. Just look at your Congresswoman, who I can't help thinking of as "Mad Max," who would have your people harass those with whom they disagree politically, signaling not only their sense of virtue, but also of entitlement to the one and only political truth--their own.
And it is not we who work assiduously to prevent the non-elite classes from finding work in the private sector, but your side. We favor limiting labor supply to force up wages; we favor limiting regulations (as eventually did George McGoverm, when he became a businessman) in order to make it easier to start and run a business that employs others; we favored an internationally competitive corporate tax rate to keep our corporations at home, repatriate $billions remaining abroad for tax reasons, and allowing the increase in competitiveness to create more jobs here, at home.
Anything less than universal health care, for every citizen, is barbaric.
The thieves that are called Republicans only because they aren't yet called felons should rot in hell for trying to take and keep every nickel they haven't yet gotten their small and corrupt hands on.
7
If not for everyone, at least for our poorest and neediest. The way we treat our poor in this country is disgraceful.
1
No surprise. GOP pols are the vassal knights of moneylords (landlords updated)--jousting for tips and party favors.
Moneylords don't work--their money works for them. Ah-- but they need employees to do the real work. The pols punish potential workers with union busting and disincentives if they don't obey the call to work for the moneylords.
No work, no health care. No work, no food stamps. Soon it will be No work, no vote.
Won't that diminish the working class? That's where "No abortion" kicks in. Produce unwanted unloved babies destined to be drones.
2
That this happens in the same universe where Trump administration members squander millions of dollars on themselves, their travel, and stupid phone booths and dining sets is a disgrace. Healthcare should be a right of every man, woman and child in the country not a for profit industry. That is immoral and values people only as long as they are wealthy enough to pay for insurance, drugs, and their care. And God forbid you should actually be a sick person and have a pre-existing condition. Then you are out of luck. That is like offering car insurance only to people who will never drive their cars.
Wake up America. Every other industrialized country has some form of healthcare provided for their population. American exceptionalism indeed.
4
Perhaps one reason American are ambivalent about programs like Medicaid is the socialist rhetoric implying, just as this article did, that Medicaid coverage is "owed". "Owed" implies indebtedness; when "owed" involves the feds it means transfer payments.
"Owed" also begs the question: Where do we draw the line?
Despite decades of "progressive" expansion of transfer payments programs, American work ethic remains strong; we don't want to be dependent. But we know that federal welfare programs always grow and today's helping hand may be tomorrow's entitlement.
Politicians do two things well, pit us against one another and spend money they don't have. As long as that continues, (I see no let up in sight) we are likely to remain focused more on who's getting screwed rather than on what works.
When people gather and form communities and then regions and finally nations, certain foundations of decent conduct are usually specified. In the case of the US, there are several documents as well as the long history of English Common Law (or the laws of Spain and France in some regions) which have influenced how we as individuals, communities, regions and nations work together.
For many decades now, among reasonable people globally there has been developing a consensus that healthy communities are better places to live and work than communities where diseases are allowed to flow at will. As medical/scientific knowledge grows, practices to contain certain diseases or safety hazards which are harmful to individuals are put in place to protect both individuals and the community. It would seem from this logic that health care--especially preventative health care and care for the young--must be a priority for a healthy functioning community.
My answer to the headline's question is that a nation which cares about national security makes the health care of every resident a priority whether an individual person can pay for health care or not. It is the benefit to the community, the region and to the nation, that makes providing health care to every resident a "right" of residency.
5
Conservatives believe that people should work for everything they need or want (unless, of course, they chose the right parents and inherited money), and that government should not be involved in meeting those needs or wants. Conservatives also recognize that some people can't make it without help, but they think the help should come from private charities, funded by people who choose to contribute.
Liberals believe that people should be able to have everything they need (and some of what they "merely" want), and that it is more fair to make everyone share the burden by funding the costs by taxation (ie, government programs).
All of us fall somewhere on a spectrum between these two extremes, and Americans have struggled with these issues throughout our history. We have to find compromises. We have to recognize that neither extreme is acceptable to the majority. We have to stop demonizing the "other side".
I repeat: We have to find compromises. The last time we forgot that, hundreds of thousands of American citizens killed each other in a civil war.
Please don't misread my plea for compromise to mean that I think any compromise would have resolved whether slavery was acceptable; that is NOT what I meant. Some issues cannot be resolved by compromise. But decisions about supporting those who need assistance can certainly include compromises.
"Liberals" because they believe health care is a right, do not " believe that people should be able to have everything they need (and some of what they "merely" want), " This is the kind of false equivalency the selfish make all the time. Do you believe you are entitled to police protection and a well staffed fire department? I'll bet you do! Does that make you a Nazi?
I’ve always been troubled by the insistence on labelling health care a right. I support helping those in need, but how does labeling health care a right help us achieve that goal? How much health care would the right entitle one to? How do we finance this right? These are the substantive questions, but they don’t translate well into campaign sound bites.
I don’t understand why Republicans don’t consider health care a right for Americans, since they do consider healthcare a right for Iraqi citizens.
Article 31 of the Iraqi Constitution, drafted by George W. Bush in 2005 and ratified by the Iraqi people:
“First: Every citizen has the right to health care. The State shall maintain public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and health institutions.
Second: Individuals and entities have the right to build hospitals, clinics,or private health care centers under the supervision of the State, and this shall be regulated by law.“
8
"But while most Americans agree that poor people should have health insurance, they also believe that people of all income levels should earn their benefits — the same poll from last year found that 70 percent of respondents supported Medicaid work requirements. That paradox, of increasing support for Medicaid amid lingering suspicion toward Medicaid recipients, underscores persistent questions about how Americans view those in need."
It's not taxes. It's a sick capitalist culture that values its citizens only for their ability to produce revenue.
5
"Earned privilege" ... what a concept!
A privilege is a private law, designed to benefit a few at the expense of the rest of the community. What possible good can come of privilege?
"Look to history, and when your heart saddens at the fact that liberty never yet was lasting in any corner of the world, and in any age, you will find the key of it in the gloomy truth that all who were yet free regarded liberty as their privilege, instead of regarding it as a principle. The nature of every privilege is exclusiveness, that of a principle is communicative. Liberty is a principle, -- its community is its security is its security, -- exclusiveness is its doom. What is aristocracy? It is exclusive liberty; it is privilege; and aristocracy is doomed, because it is contrary to the destiny and welfare of man. A privilege can never be lasting. Liberty restricted to one nation never can be sure. You may say 'We are the prophets of God;' but you shall not say, 'God is only our God.'" --- Louis Kossuth
1
The Republican Party has adopted the moral philosophy of denying care to "useless eaters."
1
“No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.” Aneurin (Nye) Bevan on the foundation of the NHS in Britain, 70 years ago.
3
The answer is simple. Republicans like to make other people suffer because it makes them feel good about themselves and their miserable lives.
2
The very title of this article sums up what is wrong with our country.
2
Isn't the whole point of getting Medicaid that you're too sick to work? And isn't it crazy that people dying of cancer have to work? What kind of country are we living in? One that, more and more, I'd prefer to leave.
6
Only in the U.S. would this insane question be asked. In every other civilized nation on earth health care is a human right without exception. It says more about the attitude to poor people in the U.S. then any topic imaginable. Wonder what Thomas (all men are created equal) Jefferson would say that in 2018 you can possibly even have this debate. If the U.S. does not want to be considered a heartless morally bankrupt nation; this pathetic exploitation of the poor must be ended immediately. Otherwise you stand before the world a total hypocrite in terms of human rights.
7
It may be a "right" in other countries, sir, but there are a serious litany of problems in many of those nations, the upshot of which is the failure of any number of people to get timely treatment..or treatment at all...for what ails them...So, what use is "universal health care" if one can't get the care?
1
$700,000,000.00 for the military and nothing for Single Payer!
Get out the vote in November and take back what is rightfully ours.
Let's make us the fit ones who survive!
8
Since Congress hasn't, and won't for a long time, passed a single-payer health care plan, of course there is nothing being budgeted or appropriated for single payer health care.
How can you take back something that is "rightfully yours" when there is little in our system of government that falls under that category.
Our government is divided between the states and the federal, and the leadership of those governments is done through democratic elections.
You have a "right" to govern only when The People choose, through their votes and our electoral systems, to permit you to do so...not by "right" but by the ballot box.
If you wish to be "fit to survive" work to find candidates that can win on the national stage...Lamenting about your non-existent lost "rights" isn't going to be successful.
Editorial says that during welfare reform under Reagan and Bill Clinton, similar edicts disrupted people’s benefits without improving their employment prospects.
Similar edicts? But why did the Democrats support GOP policies so much? Why weren't they a true party of opposition?
Clinton willingly approved Republican changes to “welfare as we know it”. Then some of Clinton’s close HHS aids quit.
NYT-- “ Two Clinton Aids Resign to Protest New Welfare Law’ Sept 12, 1996. Another official quit after studies showed the law would push more than a millions children into poverty.
Why so much 'similarity' between our 2 parties?
Reagan would also have approved of Bill Clinton's expansion of prisons and sentencing. S the US has the most incarcerated in the world, leaving many poor children fatherless. And Reagan would have loved Clinton’s repeal of regulations on Wall St banks. Is this how they define 'bipartisan'?
Obama’s ACA was based on a GOP plan. Our taxes prop up profits. Now the GOP wants to go further out and privatize all.
We need an editorial on this--- have the Democrats fulfilled our dire need for a true party of opposition? Or do they just try to prevent the rw extremist GOP from going too, too far? Then they get praise for bringing us back from the abyss.
How do we define too far in the US?
And why are we so close to an abyss that when a Trump criminal type wins power, the country is in danger on all counts?
2
Meredith,
No so many years ago they burned heretics.
We need at least 100 million more people to see the real reality you refer to, which of course is that there is only one party in the United States, the ruling party, the .01%ters, the Masters of Mankind, who spend every waking moment keeping the people blind to this reality.
Every election, (the Great American Joke), at every level, local, state, national, all of them, and Supreme Court nominations, especially Supreme Court nominations, are all one kind of baton or another, (nail studded club, if you will), which both fake parties pass back and forth as they race to the finish line, with the big sign, which says "Subjugation, at last".
2
The Editorial Board clearly exemplifies the major problem with the United States of America. They, like everyone else, have been cleverly fooled into an obsession with an irrelevant, unnecessary item......National Health Care. All along the real complaint has been AFFORDABLE health care for every individual. Which we once had.....back when doctors actually were accessible and took chicken in payment for house calls!! Another thing....way back when....hospitals were supported by Public Funds(local taxes), as well as by charitible organizations.......Then came the Great Depression and a radical shift in government......we created a highly successful centralized bureaucracy that was intended to save us all from our collective stupidity.........It worked for a while......now its completely out of sync and out of control with Modern Times. We fell for the ruse of "Affordable Health Care" which doesnt do anything to make it affordable, only creates a clever Bureaucratic Sleight of Hand to fool the citizens about where the Tax Money goes..........Supreme Court already agrees with me.....its nothing but a Bill of Revenue that FAILS to address actual health care......Sorry Kids.....you got played.........prove me wrong.
Nobody, leave alone the poor people, have a right to FREE HEALTHCARE, with no strings attached. Get over it.
You are being disingenuous if not mischievous. I am sure that the state program or a federal program requiring medicaid or free healthcare recipients to work ONLY applies to ABLE-BODIED people.
Surely, you know that no Red State is going to require that the sick and the infirm, and those with responsibilities toward other sick dependents work to be eligible.
There is no free lunch.
2
The left knows that, PiSonny...
That's why they are demanding free breakfasts and free dinners. It avoids the "free lunch" issue quite effectively.
1
Along with Legal Reform, Immigration Refore
America needs Medical Care Reform.
We need more Doctors, more Hospitals, more Nurses
and lower prices on Drugs.
Very few of you are just going to drop dead from
a Heart Attack or Massive Stroke.
Just how do you think you will pay for your Medical Care ?
2
Heart attacks and strokes are among the leading causes of death in the US.
1
MEM,
Your are presuming that every Heart Attack
is fatal as is every Stroke.
Most are not, but then you are incapicitated
and then the medIcal bills just keep coming.
Everyone needs healthcare, and in civilized countries, they receive it. What matters to Republicans? Profit$$$.
What matters to Democrats? People.
4
This editorial is slightly behind: Governor Scooge--er, I mean Bevin, has already managed to mete out some cruelty and show these poor people who's boss: he just ended all vision and dental for Medicaid recipients. Feeling powerful, governor?
4
How he can do that - its a federal program, right? My God, these people. Policies of national cruelty, over and over and injected everywhere.
2
The right wing really hate the middle class and poor. Most claim to be christians-they should read Matthew 25 31-48.
1
The real prize for the Trump gangsters is the elimination of Medicare and Social Security.
3
Both Kentucky’s senators, Governors and 5 of 6 congressmen are Republicans. Seems like the people of Ky know what they’re. Outing for and they are getting it. What’s the problem here?
1
Conservatives know that people on medicaid are 'takers'. They are lazy, drunken, immoral cheats living off the hard work of their betters. They are drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and some of them may be good people. Conservatives know this because they saw it on TV, and a few even read Ayn Rand.
Conservatives are wrong, but since they 'know' it, you cannot convince them by logic. They refuse to see that their 'rugged individualism' is a denial of their responsibility to their fellow citizens. Their 'tough love' is murder through neglect.
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No American has access to competent healthcare in America because there are no competent American physicians.
There is an epidemic of oral HSV2 cases (a sexually transmitted disease communicated by casual contact).
Physicians respond by lying to patients and committing malpractice.
Malpractice is standard practice in treatment of oral HSV2.
Many people will die unnecessarily with or without health insurance.
Of course, many people have died already from oral HSV2.
Medical care in America is pathetic and incompetent, with full knowledge and by physician choice.
Wrong question. Two correct questions: 1. Do poor people have a right to live?, 2. Do the rest of us have the right to kill them?
7
Put it in the ballot
Let the people vote
1
Deidre,
Think for a minute.
Who is it you are suggesting they should put it on the ballot ??
The leaders of the two fake parties, and the other nonsensical parties which never gain any traction.
See how easily we have been manipulated.
The people, you and me are the governors, the rulers, in this so called democracy, so, its us, you, me, and the 10's of millions who have the power to write it in, on every ballot, every election, every time.
Only if we wake up, and do this, will we ever regain control.
Of course, there is armed insurrection, torches and pitchforks ...
1
The GOP is no longer a political party, it is a national disease. Like any other vile disease, we must somehow rid ourselves of it. How? Vote! It's the best antidote to the cancerous Republican Party. Vote, people. Rid ourselves of this sickness.
4
Sadly, NY Times reporters and editors as well as their families, now come from social and economic strata so far removed from both theDepression and from economic dislocation which affected so many, once,
(until the Second World War) and are now makes new inroads of impoverishment unseen since the 1930's.
Russell Baker, was a relaTIVELY poor, ordinary Vet from Maryland, I believe,and worked in various departments of state papers down in that midatlantic state long before he came to NYC, back when the city was still emptying out to the "burbs", when a good solid pre-war apartment of 6 or 7 rooms could be had for $200 a month-(pretty steep then!)
The Times and it's staff of the 50's and 60's-many of whom were discharged from the wartime military to get educations and-as Baker did-find some position in a paper . Baker did not attend a ivy league school , had no graduate degree-(the police blotter?), nor did he expect to get special treatment for his writing skills, all learned by high school-not some college english class.
So now, NYTimes reporters no longer have experience with either being or knowing poverty. And much reporting about it is breathless and seems to address the subject as if it had not ever been investigated before.
At times like this-I really miss and condemn the Democrats for pushing LBJ out of the WH , only to let Nixon and his anti American , pro Confederate conspirators, in.
4
Why is there such a culture of punishment in the U.S.? There seems to be no compassion for the poor, the sick or the mentally ill; just fill the streets and prisons with them since it's their own fault. What a medieval mind-set! These are your own fellow citizens - and it could very well be you at some point in your life!
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If everyone must receive free healthcare and no one must work, let’s hope one person volunteers to run the paper money printing press.
1
That we are even asking the question is a perfect reflection of what's wrong with this country. Of course the poor have a right to health care. This only becomes a question in a profit driven system where policy is being set by people who put the rights of the rich to be richer over the rights of everyone else to basic decency. This is only a question in a country driven by greed and selfishness, "led" by a corrupt narcissist who has total control over all three branches of government. This is ony a question in a country that thinks its citizens are stupid and will not rise up, electorally or otherwise to get redress of grievances.
1
Well, Jesus did say: "1.When people are in need of aid, strike them down to the ground so they do not rise again. 2.If the feeble ask you for a cup of water, throw fire upon their heads so they burn until they declare openly unto their God that they are lazy and sinners and need to lay prostrate before their earthly masters in the temple. 3.When a man proclaims the boils on his face to be unbearable proclaim back to that man to examine his heart for sin and then live with his malady all the rest of his days in contrition. 4.If a man is breathing his last because he cannot see a physic proclaim unto him that the purity of the worthy whose earthly boons are great will shine over the world like a star in heaven and he will not be missed. 5. Oh, those who feel as though they have a right to life without first proving that they believe in My glory and my worthy followers glory shall be smitten and torn asunder by serpents and lions. 6. For those with ears to hear let it be known that you are worthy if your riches are great. 7. Life is for those approved by God according to their raiments and the amount of grain in their stores. If you cannot add to those stores then depart from Me into everlasting fire. - Book of Christian Dominionism - Chapter 1 - Franklin Graham Version - 2018.
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Do Poor People Have a Right to Health Care? You ask?
Are you joking? Are you crazy? No.
It's their own fault they are poor and it is not our responsibility to pay their doctor bills. If they die on the streets we will step over their bodies.
Signed, "Trump", McConnell, Ryan and every republican everywhere.
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not in this country - this country is incapable of joining the rest of the developed world - the corporate welfare state and the 1% always need more. we need a French type revolution - man the guillotines.
3
Around 50% of all pregnancies and births are paid for by Medicaid
Seems the NYT thinks the poor have the right to breed and breed and breed without having to work while the rest of us have to work to pay for their over-active glands.
I have gone through the detailed monthly data in my state on Medicaid on enrollment. County by county and the numbers of kids, elderly, disabled and the non-disabled adults enrolled
The non-disabled can get off their backsides and work.
All too common in my area (high tourism) is the employee who whines "ohhhhh I can't work more than 20 -24 hours a week - if I do I will lose my Medicaid and have to pay for insurance"
Gee they want complete freebies instead of having to pay the de minimis Obamacare premiums and then the deductibles and copays
Yeah they can go to work
No they do NOT have the right to sit on their backsides and have the rest of us pay for them
3
If I get a chronic illness, I'm just going to shoot myself. Makes me wonder how correlated suicide is to our extremely expensive healthcare.
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Poor People ???? It has gotten to the point where if you don't work for the government or an insurance company, or are rich, you probably will not get the health care you need. There's plenty of working class, middle class and poor people that have insurance but they find when they get sick or hurt, they are not covered or the deductible is so high they can't use it. Honestly these articles and the whole conversation is getting beyond stupid, really insane. Every knows what the answer is, the only question is how to get it implemented and the easiest and least painful way to pay for it.
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When did we get so mean? So cruel? So un-christian?
1
"I was sick and you card for me". Gospel of Matthew. Click on a site called Bible Hub and find more than a dozen similar quotes in both the Old and New Testaments.
The Republican Party and the Evangelical Christians have perverted the words of the Bible. There is no religion on earth that says to turn your back on the poor. Religion is not designed to elevate our demons. False gods before you, anyone?
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This is a reminder that there is a group of entitled, lazy people in this country. They do nothing but take take take. They feel entitled to the benefits of a democratic society without working for it, without participating in it or sacrificing anything themselves. These people (generation after generation) do nothing but take from the rest of society. Why don't they stop breeding? These people don't do any real work, but they have no problems engaging in ethically and morally questionable activities -- and many of them are criminals. They are ignorant and uncivilized. These people don't deserve to take up space on earth.
Who is this group of people I refer to? Hint: it's not the disabled or poor...
The wealthy are the true parasites of the world.
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I believe first and foremost that indigent citizens are absolutely not the nation's most vulnerable. Instead, veterans returning from war and young American families are the most vulnerable.
For these people, America is most cruel and unusual. We remand babies into foster care for insignificant errors in parenting (CAPTA) and the force adopt them (ASFA). We strip kids from their fathers and then hit the fathers with monthly payments subject to arrest for non-payment (CSSA). We send veterans to prison for insignificant infractions. We shoot young black men in the back and have established a social system akin to that of an urban housing project.
For all this mayhem, we cannot defend ourselves against any kind of attack (9/11, Las Vegas or Annapolis) yet we protect other countries with our military (Pacific Rim). We give away our science and technology with no hope of return on our investment (Iran Nuclear Deal). We arrest husbands for the rape of their wives (VAWA) and allow boys to urinate in girls' bathrooms. We are thoroughly insane in the eyes of the world.
So it makes sense that we brutalize our poorest Americans. We made them poor by taking away jobs and ruining their kid's education (NCLB). We even wiped away healthcare from them (ACA). Poor is the new middle class and whatever further social experimenting we do makes for good press but does little to improve lives.
2
Heck in my benighted Tea Party run state of Nor Carline-uh the good Christian former GOP Gov. Pat “Bathroom Birther” McCrory decided the poor people in the state, mostly children, didn’t even need free Medicaid expansion under the ACA.
Using hospital emergency rooms at great unreimbursed expense to the taxpayers for “preventative” care for the uninsured poor, again mainly children, was just fine with the good Guv.
And the TeaParty legislature won’t let Dem Guv Cooper expand it after Pat was kicked out of office.
No Medicaid expansion cost the state of over 4b of free federal money which would have gone to provide medicaid coverage to over 400k of poor, and most importantly, politically powerless, citizens of the state, and, did I mention, they were mostly children.
I was lucky enough to go to UVA and back in my ancient day physical education was a required course. At the entrance to Memorial Gym on campus there was a quote from TJ to the effect that if you ain’t got your health you can forget everything else.
I’ve been fortunate to have health insurance for me, my wife and children before they flew the nest. I cannot imagine what a nightmare it would be if I couldn’t get a family member needed
medical care.
The Trumpo sycophants who are trying to destroy the ACA simply because a black man got it passed, and thereby endangering the health of millions of Americans who have no other safety net have no humanity, which is an especial kind of evil.
4
That the New York Times, of all papers, is even asking this question is frightening.
2
This is what we got after the Cold War. Trump and Friends: "we're just like Putin".
Next up, privatization of Social Security.
Thanks to Ronald Reagan, government bad, you are on your own.
Buncha creeps.
Nothing is free. You have to work for it.
A couple of years ago the arthritis in my hips was so bad that I could barely walk and was truly a miserable human being. I was working part time but needed full time work. Now - who's going to hire a 63-year-old woman with a few wrinkles and gray hair who can hardly walk? They think you should be taken out and shot - not be given a job.
People my age are broken down from the work we've done all our lives and not having health insurance. So the little injuries keep adding up over the years.
When you receive Medicare the patient doesn't get a check - the doctors do. Colorado expanded Medicaid and I got my hips replaced and am extremely grateful.
When people can't work, their sense of value falls. And also, if you can't work, you don't pay in to Social Security.
Everybody deserves health care. This shouldn't even be a question. A healthy society is a productive society.
6
"No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means."
--Aneurin Bevan
founder of the British National Health Service
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/bevan_aneurin.shtml
6
The dole is difficult in a country that has such polarizing moral views, those who believe in a greater form of autonomous survival and those who believe in a communal survival. Some recipients are truly incapable of work while others are capable of work and simply self serving slackers. Distinguishing the two is truly difficult because one person's ailment is another person's simple discomfort. How can the government possibly track such things on a monthly basis? It's a bureaucratic nightmare in the making. What about the unemployed who are capable of work but not working?
The idea that people should give back is not such a stretch though. People can sweep streets and clean playgrounds as a way to participate in the common good and as a thank you for the social services they receive. Nothing wrong with giving back and the monitoring of it will create more jobs!
2
Canadians and Europeans who can afford it come to the US for certain medical procedures that they do not want to wait 6 months to forever to have done. If we adopt there medical system where will these people go?
Don't worry, the wealthy will always manage.
1
Just to make up for the deficit caused due to extending tax bonanza to the rich Trump and his Republican minions are hell bent on first to distort and dilute the ACA through the executive diktats and substantially curtail the Medicaid- the only public funded healthcare access plan for the low income people-ignoring the fact that about 33states, including the Republican ruled states have increased spending on the Medicaid and many other states are planning such expansion knowing its popularity among the poor and also perhaps the electoral advantage. The judicial ruling in support of the Medicaid is a strong rebuff to the Republicans and exposes their conspiracy against the poor aimed to deprive them of their basic healthcare needs.
Healthcare is an inelastic demand....we ALL need it. It’s an abomination that I, just because I worked at a job with a HUGE risk pool, have excellent health care in retirement, while another guy, doing the same job, in a small shop, has zilch, or close to it. The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet has worse outcomes than 11 other advanced industrial nations. I have a very poor relation, who wants to work, but needs a 2nd knee replacement, and Medicaid won’t do it. She’s in pain much of the time, bone on bone. The US cost for the operation is so outrageous that there’s no way I could pay it. The top 0.1% in this nation owns as much wealth as the bottom 90%. If this stratum would embrace the necessity of universal health care to the common good it would help tremendously. When a reporter asked John D. Rockefeller, “How much money is enough?” He responded, “Just a little bit more.” I think all Ayn Rand loving, hard right conservatives should watch the 1951 Alastair Sims version of “A Christmas Carol” and then think about those less fortunate.
7
The ability to work has nothing to do with the right to health care in a 'civilized' society. It's impossible to measure one's contribution to a society, so each deserves the benefits of that society, education, safety, health care.
7
We have Medicaid and Medicare for when we are old, poor, or very sick. It makes no sense — financially or otherwise—to have this in place without better access or even required preventive care when people are younger and healthy.
While I don’t want to see this happen, we should get rid of Medicare and Medicaid if we are not going to require healthcare for younger healthy people. Why pay the bill when it’s most expensive and in many cases too little too late?
I’ve had patients put off cancer treatment until they qualified for Medicare. Not because they wanted to, but they had no money. Didn’t work out so well but it certainly cost a lot.
4
Do Poor People Have a Right to Good Health?
Kentucky is 7th in the nation for obesity from unhealthy diet and overeating and essentially tied for first for tobacco use.
Over 2 in 5 Kentuckians earning less than $25,000 smoke vs. less than 1 in 5 in NYC. Overall tobacco use in NYC is about 1 in 10 vs. 1 in 4 in KY.
Also not noted in the article, is that a large percentage of Medicaid funds are for people in nursing homes.
Only a few days ago the Kentucky tobacco tax increased from 60 cents to $1.10 per pack.
By comparison the NYC tax is $5.85 with a minimum pack cost of $13.
The NYT is in a city that is a leader in improving health yet never seems to understand healthcare nor suggest that other states follow NYC/NYS leadership for better health.
If Kentucky and other states want to save money on Medicaid, using public health interventions to lower unhealthy diets and overeating and reducing tobacco use are the best way to achieve it.
Community health centers and public hospitals offer healthcare for the poor often effectively not charging for those without insurance. Expanding this network would significantly improve access to the poor.
https://www.amny.com/news/new-york-smoking-rate-1.16884815
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"But while most Americans agree that poor people should have health insurance, they also believe that people of all income levels should earn their benefits." Hm, does this not stand in contradiction to what public services are? Do we expect public school children to earn their keep? I thought the tax dollars handed over by the working class are part of what constitutes the "earned" benefits. The alternative is increasingly costly privatized services, which, trust me, we'll definitely need to earn to pay for those services as well.
3
They wish us dead as punishment for being poor, without the means to service the out of control profiteering of investors in the healthcare industries. We are a drag on profits. They are killing us for the bottom line, and inciting others to turn on us and cheer for fear they be sentenced to sicken and die next.
4
Did ya know that one can become to sick to work? Schizophrenia and other mental illnesses as well as cognitive impairment can make employment with benefits as numerous as Trump's recommended reading list.
4
Republican health care proposals if enacted will certainly cause more Americans to die. Trump's response?
"Then they had better do it and relieve the surplus population!"
3
Just as there are programs running in the background of your computer so is the program of the welfare queen picking up her check in her Cadillac running in the background of republicans especially. Have they no shame, no decency? At 4% unemployment is it reasonable to expect sick and disabled people to find jobs that will accommodate their special needs? How is someone with rheumatoid arthritis going to be able to flip hamburgers at McDonald's?
Were I a republican I would be ashamed of the mean spirited thread that is interwoven into their conservative beliefs. When I think of all the "Christians" who make up a large percentage of that party, shouldn't they examine each of there attitudes by asking themselves, Is this what Jesus would do?
3
So we fling the door open and whomever needs medical care we just give it to them. Don't worry about paying and if you need something else, come on back and we'll see what we can do to fix you up all over again. We've got this money tree in the back room and it's blooming $100 bills faster than we can pick em. How many handicap parking placards did you want?
2
Only if we want a decent country. Otherwise, no.
2
One of the primary drivers for medical costs is doctors liability insurance. For years democrats and this newspaper have been opposed to caps on liability claims, until that happens medical costs will continue to rise exponentially.
4
Those of us in the rest of the developed World know the answer is unequivocally “YES”!
Basic health care is a human right.
What kind of nation would allow its citizens to suffer and die because they are poor?
9
And I can 100% guarantee you that everyone, rich or poor, is going to get hurt or sick and eventually die. That universal truth is why we need universal health care.
1
Us. As in U.S.
Is this a GOP ploy to bump people off of SSI/SSDI (social security)? Since many people receiving social security disability also receive Medicaid, but one of the grounds for qualifying for social security is that the recipient isn’t able to work... you see the almost-literal twisted logic.. I wish the NYTimes would explore this angle a bit more.
5
It may be an opening for that.
"We the People
of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,............. promote the general Welfare,... and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The United States Constitution.
4
The GOP seems determined to exterminate poor people. Just look at the big picture. They cut back on food assistance programs so they don't have good food to eat, the gut the EPA so they don't have clean water, air or living conditions, they gut public housing so they have no roof over their head, they gut public education to keep them uninformed, they underfund public transit to keep them in one place and they want to take away their health care when all the above makes them sick. Yet places like Kentucky keep guys like McConnell in office. WHY???
5
So many Americans showed up at border towns using either borrowed or forged health cards to get healthcare, the system had to go to photo ID to stop a practice costing Ontario multi millions of $$. US Pharmatour buses managed the same thing, draining local inventories until that was stopped as well by making it illegal to fill any more foreign (US) scripts.
2
Do POOR people have a right to health care? This question is offensive. Everyone has a right to health care. What kind of person would answer no? What kind of society would deny health care to the poor? America... richest country in the world where health care is for profits, not patients.
8
The idea that anyone, regardless of income, social status, employment status, age etc, can call the fire department when required, or can use the library, or can call the police if necessary is viewed as completely normal and the way it should be, by all Americans. But for some reason if a person needs a transplant, or an operation, or their PSA or cholesterol checked, then it all depends on who they are, & what they do for a living. This concept is so foreign to the rest of the world. I remember reading , about 20 years ago, about a guy who had a serious medical situation, & he couldn't quit his job because he needed the health insurance. I was shocked. What The heck does your job have to do with your private medical needs? Since then I've found out that that is the way the USA operates, & everyone thinks it's normal. What exactly is the purpose of government if it is not to look after the welfare of its citizens? I know in the USA the purpose is military, but shouldn't it be just looking after its citizens? Why have a govt otherwise?
11
When first elected Ronald Reagan and his administration proposed eliminating free libraries. Ronnie was a real mench.
2
Ask Donald Trump and his enablers in Congress. The Donald Trump who authorised work for Medicaid, by signing an Executive Order (Illegal when Dems Do Them). Ask Donald Trump and his Enablers in Congress who campaigned on repealing Obamacare for 2 years!
Ask Donald Trump who promised to replace Obamacare with Better Insurance for EVERYONE that would cover Everyone and Cost Less for Everyone. Ask him what he thinks, especially if you voted for him! Where’s the Better, Cheaper, Healthcare for everyone!
Really sick of people who.play games with peoples well being. It’s really cruel.
1
I believe part of the problem is not classifying providing care for children or elderly as work. It certainly is work and that is part of what is wrong in this country by not valuing care givers!!!!!
5
Everyone should have access to health care. Every civilized country other than the US has health care for all at significantly lower cost. Middle class people are also struggling. It is not just a problem for the poor. It is a problem for anyone but the wealthy. If this is being challenged in court, I wouldn't hold my breath for a good outcome if the Judge is a Republican. In a similar type of case in Michigan, Judge Murphy, a Republican, recently ruled that literacy is not a constitutional right, even though schooling is the law of the land for all children. Therefore, a failing Detroit school district has no obligation to give the students a proper education.
The strangest part of this is that Trump's voter base are these very people who are getting their health care cut off. The same people who voted for Trump to get rid of that "terrible" Obamacare, then wondered why they were going to lose their health insurance. Rather than poor people being cut off, it is stupid people.
3
All this gibberish after a district court ruling is speculative. Appeals follow, possibly leading to a decision at the Supreme Court. Then, after a final decision, it is time for more gibberish.
1
"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."
-- Teddy Roosevelt, Chicago , IL , June 17, 1912
5
Do poor people deserve healthcare?
Of course they do.
All people do.
White, black, brown, male, female, young, old, healthy, infirm, rich, poor, religious, non-religious, conservative, liberal, any sexual gender, everyone.
The thing that is supposed to separate humans from animals is our care and compassion for our fellow beings.
And most days now, it's hard to tell that Republicans are human.
Vote Democratic on November 6th.
Vote for decency. Vote for the future, not the past.
Every seat, every office.
Changing Congress is our best hope.
Vote.
4
Poor people have a right to vote, and by failing to exercise that right, forfeit all others.
2
Our government is at war with its people. When the people who are victimized by this who didn't previously vote they'll figure it out.
2
I'd much rather live in a country of strong, healthy, sane people, than a country full of the desperately sick, poor or deranged. Appeal to our selfish side, universal health care would make all of us better off.
9
The idea that the non-working class has the right to enslave working people to pay for their medical care illustrates the inability of the socialist left to understand fairness. Of course people should have medical care; of course people should work for the benefits they want. The left buys its votes by redistributing wealth from those who work to those who won't. It is a proven formula for vote-getting; it is also a proven formula for ruin. BFP
1
Nice use of incendiary language like “enslave”.
Providing people with healthcare even when they are not working is not a path to ruin for those people . It allows people to survive when they can’t work due to an injury. I had an accident last year, requiring multiple surgeries and couldn’t work for 4 months. Luckily I was able to hold on to my job, or I would be bankrupt and likely homeless now.
I hope you never lose your job due to an illness, and thus healthcare, but how can you be sure? If you do, will you remain as principled as you claim? Will you simply let yourself die rather than “enslaving” working people to help pay for your emergency room visits and other care? I am pretty sure you wouldn’t, and happily let other taxpayers help for your care in that situation. As it should be.
3
BFP - this notion of redistribution is getting absurd. That you fall for it shows how little deep thinking you/others are doing on the subject. Its a canard and dog whistle in one neat package.
How exactly, and show us the numbers of this sinful redistribution - when the top 1-5% keep getting richer, while the rest keep sliding down the hill? Please with real data and well reasoned points show the redistribution of say...the last 8-12 years.
In all the years where the Left has allegedly been redistributing wealth (to win votes) - at the same time the 1-5% have made huge - bigly- gains, while the rest have not.
So whats wrong with your dopey claim? Even the smarter, more pragmatic among the top percentages say they can afford to lose more and still not feel its effects.
And it still would not look like actual redistribution.
Plus, you trot out yet another Conservative, Repub meme, that like so many, is false. Being poor doesn't mean someone isn't working...or didn't work and now cant. You are all fixated on this false story about a huge populace of perpetually non-working people living in luxury off assistance. The System Gamers. Hordes of unwed minority moms, and their boyfriends, and gaggles of children all living like Riley off SNAP, and other programs. Getting prime healthcare off of your dime. Lol!
Get out from behind those MAGA blinders. The data doesn't support your world view!
2
The conservative or Republican position on healthcare is truly deplorable. It' sickening to read about a policy that suggests those who live at the poverty level and are in ill health should be inundated with paperwork, forced to work and if they somehow make just a tad over some arbitrary amount they no longer qualify for coverage at the time they need it the most. I seem to recall the drumbeat of the GOP being the party of "family values" and the term "compassionate conservative." And where are the evangelicals in all of this? Are they willing to give these people a "Mulligan" much like they gave Trump for his infidelity and corrupt business practices? They somehow don't consider these people in need are AMERICANS and human beings and not to be abandoned in their moment of vulnerability. The GOP's position on separating families at the border, healthcare, taxes, trade, diplomacy and just about every other area seems to be incoherent and based only on hate and vindictiveness. It does not reflect anything close to American or Christian values of inclusiveness and tolerance. Yet the GOP led congress, so concerned with national debt added a trillion and a half dollars for a tax cut to those who need it the least. This is abuse of our system of governance and they're worried about a social program being abused. They should be charged with negligent homicide if only one person dies as a result of these policies beginning with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Disgusting.
1
Wow, having to work to get something, what were the Republicans thinking?
2
@nreb, to answer your question, repubs had their normal intellectual occlusion, in other words, they could not imagine any world other than their own country club times..duh.. same as it ever was. more people living in the streets because of republican policies - and believe me, I do not like encountering these poor humans every day. I suggest you ride the san diego trolley or take the d train in new york, and you will see the people who are denied basic services because of republicn idiocy.
People have the right to have work for their own dignity
To avoid populist resentment, welfare programs in general and Medicaid in particular must contain ‘work’ requirements. Rather than try to prevent them, non-populists should try to assure that no one in need is actually prevented from getting government help, as clearly happened in Kentucky. A goal might be to have ‘work’ defined as any activity other than eating, sleeping, or watching TV. Let the lawyers find the necessary obfuscatory language. The point is to be able to say that nobody is getting anything for free.
This is yet another illustration that the decisive factors determining whether a policy is acceptable to lower middle-class voters are always cultural, ideological, and psychological, and depend on locale. Evidence and data do not matter. And there is no percentage in trying to shame the Bible Belters or the Neanderthals who represent them in Congress into accepting the values of rich, cosmopolitan pointy heads from NY & CA.
1
I have decided not to pay for defense. I don't think I'm ever going to need it and I don't want to support other people's bad habits. America is the land where every individual has to pay his own way. We pay for what we want and use. And I will never need nuclear weapons, or submarines, or tanks for that matter. I don't even live near an ocean, so why should I pay for submarines and cruisers and battleships to protect those who do? Okay, if America is ever attacked by armed invaders I'll pay for my share of defense when the invaders get near Northern Nevada. But not a penny before that. If this sounds rational to you, see a psychiatrist -- at your own expense.
5
I believe every American citizen should have the same healthcare plan congress has. But until we get there we must acknowledge that there is a culture of dependency in areas of the country. Not just black ghettos either. Many Trump states like Kentucky, W. Virginia, Alabama, Tennesee, and Louisianna have loads of whites whose very existence mandates they collect from every government program available, then they turn around and vote republican thinking benefits will only be cut for "those people".
2
You're afraid of being "taken advantage of" by people who need health care? You can't possibly be serious. In a country where the government spends billions on "mismanagement" in Afghanistan you're honestly worried about some poor person in Appalachia who can't afford their medicine victimizing you?!
You are being taken advantage of. But it's not by poor people.
9
Not only do we ALL have a right to Health Care, we also have a right to quality, equal EDUCATION for all, regardless of that lunatic judge, who says otherwise.
4
OH My. Sex, lies, videotape -- junque food, junque economy. Let's increase the defense budget beyond (what are we paying for anyar way?) join in a few more wars in the Near East (does anyone really know what's going on with these two??), put in more legislation to raise the cost of medicine and medical care and create more middle men (what do you think insurance companies are? ) Why does dialysis cost 100K per year per patient? Why isn't it done at home? It can be? Why so expensive? What does DaVita pay its stockholders? (more middle men) executives?
Why hasn't the Times run a series of editorials about the long forgotten Federal Tax aka Luxury Tax of 10% on stuff such as paintings sold at auction on which it is possible to not pay any tax at all (no state or local tax) legally?? I know that Mr. Clinton though it would hurt the luxury yacht business in CT? (No one wants to buy a boat these days.) With the tariff coming in (possibly regressive taxes) we'll have lots more $$ to spend on the unnecessaries like war. YAY.
3
I would like the NYT to write an article titled "Do Financially Secure People Have a Right to Legally Hide Their Parent's Wealth So Medicaid Has To Pay for Their Parent's Nursing Home and Medical Expenses."
17
Yes, this is how Trump and the GOP want America to be. It's a dog eat dog world. I've got mine and boo to you. I win you lose - move over sucker.
Winning in America is defined as being rich, rich, rich. All is fair in the grasp for wealth and power. Losing is your fault. You didn't work hard enough or cheat hard enough. In short, American culture now values money more than people.
The answer would be that in America today people do not have a right to health care. All people. It just that those people who have money can buy what they want including health care.
Being able to afford things - from cars to health care - is how America defines success and access to 'stuff' from homes to education to the better jobs to you name it.
And the rich make it very clear - It is YOUR fault that you do not have lots of money. There is an insane sort of circular reasoning that 'justifies' the rich as deserving and keeps the poor poor. This is unfettered capitalism where the 1% is becoming more autocratic and oligarchic afraid of losing their money.
6
Just don’t let Justice Murphy of Michigan get a chance to rule on this. He might rule that acces to adequate healthcare, like an adequate education, is not a right to be xpected by all.
1
No right requires money and technology. Many people here clearly misunderstand the distinction between and a right and privilege. Healthcare is a series of investments by society--some are wise (ie, immunizations) and some are not. Some also thankfully reflect the values of society (caring for disabled) and some reflect an inability to accept the inherent mortal nature of the human existence. Be thankful that your society has the monetary resources and technology and values to provide some healthcare but don't view it as a right. For in an economic depression, I think you would see your healthcare "rights" disappear quite quickly.
1
'Conservatives/Republicans' obviously believe that the poor must be punished and berated and humiliated until they mend their ways and choose better parents and fortune.
7
I don't think healthcare is a human right. I do think it is an earned previlege although my definition is different. It is a privilege of being an American citizen. The mightiest and richest country on earth should help its own citizens before helping others. Because it is a privilege, becoming US citizens should be earned. Citizenship by birth is stupid and unfair. Also every US citizen has civil responsibilities including voting. For people refusing to participate, they should not get the previlege. I also think we should come to terms with those people who hate this country. US should buy out their rights and they can go somewhere else. A divorce is the best outcome for everybody.
The previlege is earned. But there are many ways to earn it. Why are people still debating?
2
Surely you're conflating hate of country with hate of government, no? Mark Twain said Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time, and your government only when it deserves it.
JC - oh so how do you define hate? By not agreeing with some policy or action of the Govt? Is that hate? But likely only for those you don't agree with...those you do, they're fine.
You were born in the US, right? Sounds stupid and unfair that you're a citizen. Go earn it! And do it under my terms.
Willing?
Voting is not an earned right. Its an automatic one. For many people not voting is a protest. For others they find it too difficult to do. (I disagree,but thats my POV)
For many more, they are purposely being blocked. They are having a right denied them by those who think they should control who gets to exercise that right.
Do you support that sort of ownership over others, of an automatic right?
1
Forget about healthcare. The most abused free service provided by the federal government is the WIC program (food stamps).
In NYC, do you know how many people would drop out if they were told to work just eight hours a week cleaning up trash along roads and in parks?
4
FYI- the WIC program, Women, Infants and Children provides access to healthy food, breastfeeding support, and monitoring for infants and children who are underweight or at risk of not developing properly. It is a completely different program than the "Food Stamp" program, which provides vouchers for food for indigent individuals. You may want to do a bit more research into what these programs cover.
4
From the USDA Food and Nutrition Service website:
The Supplemental Nutrition Program aka ‘SNAP offers nutrition assistance to millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families and provides economic benefits to communities. SNAP is the largest program in the domestic hunger safety net. The Food and Nutrition Service works with State agencies, nutrition educators, and neighborhood and faith-based organizations to ensure that those eligible for nutrition assistance can make informed decisions about applying for the program and can access benefits. FNS also works with State partners and the retail community to improve program administration and ensure program integrity.’
‘The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.’
Thus, your assertion that WIC is food stamps is incorrect. It always amazes me that so many citizens begrudge underprivileged children, babies, and adults a nutritional sufficiency. Oh and one more thing: SNAP and WIC are not designed to provide eligible individuals with all their nutritional needs; rather, they are supplemental programs, as amply described above.
3
WIC and food stamps are two very different programs.
1
"Is this how America is going to be?" Read the comments: America is already filled with mean spirited, narrow minded, ignorant people who begrudge anyone needy getting their needs met at taxpayer expense. America is a remarkably uncharitable place. Under Trump, the uncharitable feel emboldened to voice their disdain for anyone lesser, anyone Other. I am disgusted by much of what I read in these comments.
2
I applaud the Times for this article.
Unfortunately, a huge proportion of Americans know very little about these programs.
Most white, middle-class people, who get their news from dumbed-down television sound bites, subsribe to the idea that the welfare state coddles the poor, gives the poor too much and these benigbted White suburbanites believe that women on welfare are, as President Reagan said, "welfare queens."
But let me go from the abstract to the concrete. On the eve of the 1994 gubernatorial election in NY, the Republican candidate, George Pataki, said that Medicaid was so generous that it paid for hair transplants. The New York Post relayed this lie to their readers and did not bother to note that Pataki was creating his own reality. On election day, Pataki defeated Mario Cuomo.
What sort of a democracy do we have when people feed on lies as passively as geese being stuffed grain, so their engorged livers can be used for pate.
2
I agree with all the points articulated here, except one: the headline “Do Poor People have the Right to Health Care?” should be amended to “Do ALL People have the Right to Health Care?” And the answer is a resounding “YES!”
It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans are so opposed to spending on healthcare and education, while they never complain one peep about the true drain on our nation's wealth, military spending. We spend over $600,000,000,000 per year on military programs that largely go to line defense contractor pockets, and my fellow americans are so brainwashed that they don't seem to see the problem. Iraq and Afghanistan erased a trillion dollars of our taxpayer dollars, and still my fellow sheep in American clothes didn't let out a whimper against this ludicrous waste of our money. Cut military spending in half, and stop whining about education and healthcare you fools. We'll still be plenty safe and a lot healthier and better educated!
12
A Trump enthusiast I know rejects columns like this because it is a priori dismissible -- "the NY Times is a liberal leaning paper that disseminates fake news."
In his view, there are no "facts" -- just "biases". He prefers "facts" and statistics from sources that reinforce his biases.
It appears that this is where at least 40% of voters are.
We just have to make sure that enough of the others show up at the polls.
6
The government can barely protect the border and fill potholes. Why would I trust them with my health?
Everyone, including your child will at some point in their lives will suffer a major illness and there should never ever be a prerequisite for anyone to have quality health care. For the love of God, every civilized nation recognizes this, are we so dumb or full of hate that we can't see the obvious and that is that we are denying even ourselves at some point in our lives. Why is this country so bent on hurting, harming, or depriving people of even the basic things in life. Insanity, but then again, we have an insane leader.
4
No, Republicans view poverty as a character flaw. Some see it as a sin. Poor people, according to them, have only themselves to blame for being poor. They are lazy, irresponsible, and probably immoral. They are certainly undeserving. Every penny paid them is seen as being directly stolen out of Republican pockets. So they are criminal as well in GOP eyes.
So it is obvious that the poor must be shamed and punished. Forcing them into minimum wage jobs might at least point up their inherent sloth. Only then can Republicans cement their entitlement and privilege.
The GOP solution: Anyone who wants to help the poor should give money to private charity--preferably a religious institution. where they can properly be confronted and shamed (with government support--no irony here!).
6
If you are willing to argue that anyone in a country this wealthy should be denied necessary health care under any circumstances you are morally bankrupt. We can afford airplanes the Pentagon doesn't want, tanks we don't need, wars we can't end, $40,000 phone booths and so many other ridiculous expenditures; don't tell me we don't have the money to take care of our sick and disabled.
17
The fact that this is even a question reveals our degeneracy, shame, cruelty and inhumanity.
14
As a physician I believe healthcare is the most important entitlement of all. There will always be churches and organizations that will provide food but only the government can really provide healthcare. Also, worrying about providing food or paying the rent is a motivation to work but many do not get that same motivation to pay for health insurance. As conservative as I am I believe not providing health care in this is unethical.
6
I live in rural Oregon. I've worked full time for 42 years, when I could have been slacking off raising my 2 kids. I'm a liberal. My beloved husband is diagnosed w/Parkinson's, and his symptoms are progressing quickly, especially the dementia/hallucinations. I have 2.5 years to go before retirement, but I left my job to help him. He's not THAT bad yet, but he's not going to get better. We now live on his combat-related disability and his SS, and concentrate on VA appts and Parkinson's support mtgs, exercises, physical therapy, etc. I chose this, not only because I now need to be a caregiver, but because I WANT to be with him as long as he still knows me. I guess now, this makes me a slacker. You'll make me work at the local mart even though my husband drifts away without me. C'mon, tell me why I don't deserve to have health resources I don't have to scrounge for. I'll wait.
4
Requiring people to work to get healthcare seems rational. The problem is that despite unemployment at 4%, I know numerous people (in their 50s), who have been trying to find a job for over a year and have been unable to. Everyday they put on a suit or a dress and apply. They do try.
Like education, health care is a right. Everyone is better off when people have access to healthcare.
3
This editorial is a lukewarm, rational discussion of the issues surrounding healthcare for the poor. The editorial looks at all sides of the question. But the decision should be based on moral rather than financial concerns. And the discussion about such a decision should be about morality rather than finance, about what the wealthiest country in the world should do to protect the lives of its citizens. And the answer to that question seems obvious.
2
I certainly agree with the sentiments expressed here by my fellow Canadian citizens. How the USA promotes itself as the freest, most prosperous country in the history of the world blah blah blah but refuses to provide all its citizens, rich or poor, white or African American, straight or gay, healthy or unhealthy, free of existing conditions or not blah blah blah with equal health care is truly monstrous. I worked and lived in the USA for eleven years doing cancer research at Columbia University and was constantly amazed even in that most liberal of work environments in perhaps the most liberal city in the world, when confronted with opinions like "why should I, a person who works hard, worked hard for my education blah blah blah, should be responsible for the health of someone else who did the opposite?" But then I realized there is a major difference between Canadians generally and Americans in how both see themselves in the world: Canadians by and large adhere to the belief that "we are our brothers' keeper" whereas in the USA its all about the individual and hence Americans live in a world where it is "every man for himself."
8
This article identifies the 16 Kentuckians who won their lawsuit primarily through their professions--lawyer, mortician, etc.--so presumably these people aspire to or already did work. Can't the law student work by editing legal documents at a desk rather than by lifting heavy equipment or by running? Presumably he/she is in law school to get a seated law job one day. Asking him/her to use existing skills seems reasonable. If the mother with a hip disease is able to care for her family and her children, then isn't she able to do some similar work for her Medicaid? She can work without climbing ladders or running marathons: she can be seated at a computer, for example. It would seem that there are only unusual cases, where the Medicaid recipient is too seriously ill or too seriously handicapped to work in any form. Since many recipients are already working or want to work, then wouldn't getting a job help them? If someone is unemployed and is looking for work, then getting the job would eliminate the work gap on their resume that prospective employers might question. Since being unemployed contributes to feelings of depression, getting work would likely improve their psychological health as well.
No one is going to like this, but we need an expert study to define a level of cost-efficient, no-frills health care, which should be a basic right.
This would lop off the 5% of the population that accounts for 50% of health care spending. What do about their situation is a serious ethical, political and financial issue with no easy answers. How compassionate can we afford to be? Is there a role for private charity?
But by dividing the question, we may make a move forward rather than remain in ideologically-induced deadlock, as we have for decades.
2
How about a work requirement for all the members of Congress who have federally subsidized health insurance?
9
and NO sleeping in your capitol hill offices - rent a place already, or bring your family on your adventure, like they did in the old days..Paul Ryan - i do not want to visit any congressional office that has been used as a sleeping quarters for anybody!! disgusting!!!
3
If healthcare is a right, then it cannot be denied. Yet it is financially infeasible to pay for any medical procedure or medicine regardless of evidence based benefit. This is why all single payer models have a cost control mechanism, such as NICE in the UK. Typically, what this means is that expensive end of life or ongoing chronic care will be viewed through the lens of social cost benefit vs medical benefit. Heroic medicine is off the menu, and healthcare becomes a service.
As one of those people who many commenters here think should pay for everyone else, I don’t see the value in this model, ie, giving up my high end care so those who are ill equipped to survive get care. By all means, let’s look for better ways to make the system better or more efficient, but not at the cost to those already paying substantial sums into it and not by declaring blanket, unfunded “rights”.
1
I am in favor of universal health coverage because I know from personal experience that it is cheaper and more efficient than the patchwork American system. I am also in favor of having everybody who gets any kind of government assistance having to work. Your job is your dignity, the meaning of your life, and your ticket to being a member of society. If you don’t work, you are not a human being. In other countries I saw intellectually disabled people being incorporated into the workforce and gaining self-confidence and human worth out of having to get up and do something useful every day. I saw an award-winning winery in Israel, most of whose personnel are autistic people. I see retirees work or volunteer every day. What will Medicaid recipients do if they don’t have to work? Stare at the TV screen? Pop pills? The four plaintiffs so evasively described in the article - how are they not working? I thought that being a student satisfied the work requirement. And what about the mother of 4 kids? I only have 2 and they have been a lot of work - and still, I managed a full-time successful career. No, everybody should have a bare-bones medical coverage regardless of income. And everybody should work, also regardless of income.
3
From time to time I see people asking, if health care is a right, whether doctor's will be forced to provide it. Even doctors write to ask this question.
The law says criminal defendants have a right to counsel, so there's at least one profession mandated to provide services to the needy. Generally it's known, however, that the quality of representation at trial is lower if you're not paying for the lawyer....
What is ironic is that the proposed number of work hours required to maintain Medicaid eligibility will, in spite of lack of availability of working hours will render many fully disabled without maintenance healthcare help. This would be a prime example of reducing overall assistance help! For those with chronic conditions like diabetes, lack of necessary medication and maintenance healthcare visits and lab testing will likely result in permanent disability through amputations and blindness that would be otherwise preventable.
1
A right to health care was never going to make it into the Declaration of Independence.
Health care for all is in the interest of modern society.
To overblow the motivation for public health is to invite dissonance and blowback.
1
Universal health care is a fundamental human right and we should amend the constitution to end this discussion once and for all. There are ways to introduce this right without breaking the economy, we simply need a Congress with the will to do the right thing. The clock is ticking, people are dying and families are broken because of this failure.
3
There is a place for public assistance programs. But as the editorial mentions, cost is a major factor. This country has the money, I think, but the definition of "in need" is strained. It includes everyone from the homeless, the sick, the very poor, to our top industries via loophole tax code. The "public assistance dollar" is stretched so thin that it has frayed. It's no longer a simple question of who really needs help; our political leaders could, if the priorities were straight, come to relatively quick agreement on that score if special interests could excluded from the discussion. Too many are competing for "help" and too many who don't need it are getting it while we debate who needs and deserves it.
2
First the issue here is "insurance" not "care". Legally everyone has a "right" to "care" in the hospital emergency room. They have no legal right to care anywhere else. For example where I go to care they accept my insurance and are willing to wait for that insurance to pay before requiring me to pay. They used to want some payment prior to giving care, I declined. They could have declined to provide care and I would have probably went elsewhere. There is no general "right" for care in law.
1
73 million people are on Medicaid.
That's about 1 in 5 people. The costs for this are borne by the other 4 in 5 people (many of whom are children so earn no money, or are elderly).
In other words, a majority of working age Americans are footing the medical bills for 20% of people.
This situation is being ignored in this editorial. The only solution offered is to continue to do this because otherwise we aren't nice people. That's no solution.
It can't continue. Give a solution. We have simply too many people taking Medicaid and CHIPS. And those costs are cutting into many family's finances.
5
No, You are incorrect. Many people receiving Medicaid DO work for money and pay into the Medicaid coffers, or did in the past.
And even if this were not the case, let’s consider this: Do you have kids? If I don’t, then arguably I am helping pay for their education. If you need and receive help from the police or fire department, but I never do, you’re mooching off my labor (that helped fund police/fire via taxes). If your preferred elected leader declares war on a nation when I don’t think it’s justified, I’m helping pay, through my taxes, for your war; and if my kid is in the military and dies in that war, I could say I was forced to pay, via my taxes, for my own child to die.
By your logic and complaint, none of us should have to pay for anything we disagree with or just care not to. In the real world of communities and states and nations, that leads to anarchy, which tend to mean chaos. Good luck with that.
2
MSW: Regrettably you provided no evidence regarding what I was incorrect about. The facts are all correct. While it is true that there may be some payment into the Medicaid system by people receiving Medicaid, the fact is that it mostly, subsidized by people who are working full time.
I am in favor of Medicaid, but do believe that it has gotten out of control. We know, well, two families whose children receive medical care through CHIPS. Both families have two able bodied adults. Two of those adults quit well paying jobs.
Who doesn't know people who are gaming the system as they are?
1/3 of Medicaid recipients are children. Is there something wrong with setting the expectation that people not have children until they are able to adequately pay for them? How many of the parents of these children are single-parents? Isn't that a problem?
Your argument about all of us paying for things we don't use, at times, falls flat when we are talking about this situation. I believe in taxes, and was opposed to Trump's tax cut.
But there is a middle ground here. The program cannot sustain itself when there are 1/5 of the population that uses expensive medical care that is subsidized about 2/5 or so of people who work. Those 1/5 do NOT pay enough taxes to pay for our schools, police, etc. The 2/5 also pays for those services.
There are needy people, and I want medical care for them. I worked with them all of my career. I also saw many who could work who weren't. Many.
What is needed is balance. A safety net should be available for the indigent who are not able to work for health reasons, but New York Times is wrong in asserting that the government should not scrutinize all claims and should not be able to impose reasonable work requirements. Medicaid goes hand in hand with Social Security Disability and there is a whole pipeline of Doctors and Lawyers who get people on the rolls of these programs. The fact is that these are in a sense insurance programs that all of us taxpayers pay into with the hope they will be available to us when we need them. If a Doctors practice is based on an unreasonable number of SSD claims or a Lawyers practice is based on cultivating a network where these claims is the main focus, government should be scrutinizing those practices and they should sue to take their licenses away if fraud is suspected. The situation to an extent mirrors that of another program, AFDC, 25 years ago when young women were having child after child to stay on the AFDC rolls with a revolving door of boyfriends. Congress ended AFDC and put a lifetime limit on how many years a woman with child could stay on welfare, the result is that now we have the lowest teen births in more than 50 years. There should be room for similar innovation on Medicaid and SSD as well.
3
Health care is the responsibility of a civilized society and that's how it should be promoted. A right is something one would have if one were the only person left on earth. It is the freedom to act uninhibited by others, not something someone else must provide. When the question of whether we want to be a civilized society or not, the answer is obvious.
Further, when society is responsible, it sets the terms and can ensure healthcare dollars are spent wisely.
2
Funny, in most civilized countries, this is not a question at all. Single payer works!
4
I question the use of the word "society" in this article. The United States' continual failure to take care of its own citizens demonstrates that it is neither a "society" or a "civilization", but rather an exhausted, failing state on the brink of collapse. Fascism is coming and we probably deserve it.
5
The Trump administration’s push to enact work requirements is aimed at punishing the poor.
"This disposition to admire, and almost worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise, or, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...is...the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiment."
--"The Theory of Moral Sentiments," Adam Smith (moral philosopher and the father of capitalism, "Wealth of nations")
4
I can't wrap my head around why anyone thinks it's a good idea to create mountains of new paperwork -- and hire people to handle that paperwork -- in order to let people die of treatable conditions when they forget to fill in a blank, do it late, or do it wrong.
3
“Do Poor People Have a Right to Health Care?”
It is revealing about America in an embarrassing and shameful way that the editorial board of a major American newspaper with a world-wide readership finds it necessary to write an Opinion piece addressing this question. In a purportedly civilized society an editorial might have the same title but with the word “Do” eliminated and the question mark replaced by an exclamation point and a discussion of how to provide universal healthcare effectively to all of this nation’s citizens so that they can realize the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as stated in the Declaration of Independence.
4
Some wise attributions:
You measure the degree of civilisation of a society by how it treats its weakest members - Churchill.
A society will be judged by how it treats its weakest members -Truman.
Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members - the last, the least, the littlest - Cardinal Mahony.
A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members - Ghandi.
No matter how you say it - we are deplorable.
2
Given that the NYT appears to recognize that every single human being deserves to receive health care when needed regardless of ability to pay, it is odd that the paper did not support the candidate who championed Medicare-for-all in the 2016 Democratic primaries.
6
And yet, Trumps base as we know, are the very ones who would be next to lose everything should they lose their job and become ill. He and Republicans are very effective at blaming the wrong things. It is not immigrants or brown people who are a threat to them. It is the very politicians that they gleefully vote for.
3
A close relative in his early 50's is a welder but he chooses not to work. He is obese, has many health problems related to his couch potato lifestyle. He now lives off Medicaid thanks to the US Taxpayer and does get the "free" healthcare that we all want to have. This guy should have to work to get his "free" healthcare. I know many people like him in the rural area where I live. These people understand far too well how the system works and I have no sympathy for any of them.
2
Any Medicaid minimum work-requirement assumes that private employers will knowingly hire someone burdened with chronic health problems. In a perfect, charitable loving Christian world they might, but in the Era of Trump ours is decidedly hateful, selfish and unChristian to its marrow.
Employers understand perfectly well that unhealthy employees are unreliable and will raise their monthly health insurance and workman compensation premiums. Chronically ill people aren’t able to hide their condition. As a result, they are frequently discriminated against. All a work-requirement does is eliminate their already limited and unsatisfactory healthcare options.
3
The long-term poor and the sick are guilty of not having chosen their DNA and early childhood experiences wisely. After growing up, they must be punished by withdrawal of the unearned human rights that they enjoyed as babies, such as help and care. It's only fair.
4
Do poor people have a right to health care?
Apparently not.
1
70% of American respondents in the cited 2017 poll supported medicaid work requirements? Heck, what's left? Gulags for the poor? Sure there are shirkers out there, but for the vast majority of the poor who have serious health issues, for goodness sake, give 'em a break people. Albert Schweitzer once said that the purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.
4
We are a heartless country when it comes to treating the sick here. I don't think that the majority of us who live here are heartless but we are governed by people who are. Why is it that when money needs to be shaved from government spending, it's the sick and downtrodden who are the first victims of money cuts rather than all those who benefit from our sick and twisted health care system? Drug companies, for profit hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, insurance providers and scammers are all part of the reason for high costs yet they're allowed and even helped by our government rulers in their greedy ways. There's a lot of cleaning up to do and if I were looking for the biggest bang for my buck I'd start at the top and work my way down.
3
"....So as officials consider the future of Medicaid, they must ask themselves: Is this how America is going to be?"
Get with the times, Times! In this reactionary period the only question officials are going to ask themselves is, "How will this help my reelection chances?" News flash: punitive policy towards the poor helps, mostly. Americans don't care about anybody but themselves any more. How else to explain the government we have elected?
Human Rights, World Human Rights includes reasonable Health Care for all. This also includes a reasonable, intelligent, basic living class standard. Thus, there should not be: poor people. ----
In the Future, there will be Human Rights. Right now, 1) there are many billionaires and millionaires, for instance, who got that bank account amount through illegal, unethical, violent, unintelligent, anti-human rights, anti-equality ways.
Also, 2) many people are earning way too much money with their low level resumes, low amount of education. Their jobs are paying them too much for the low quality performance that they are doing. This poor economy cannot last.
In the Future, the Top Salary any person can earn is 2 Million Dollars a year. So, CEOs, for instance, will not be earning the beyond 2 Million dollars they are earning now.
1
“The record shows that 95,000 people would lose Medicaid coverage,” Judge James Boasberg wrote in his decision. “And yet the Secretary paid no attention to that deprivation.”
So what are their plans for the 95,000 people that would lose their Medicaid? Obviously they did not offer any explanations or plans.
3
Do poor people have a right to health care? Yes. Moving on.
3
To the GOP the question is not "do poor people have a right to health care" but "do poor people have a right to live".
And to them the answer is a resounding no. They are for the right to life for the unborn. But once born, well, you are on your own. The poor must be responsible for their own mistakes - not to be born into a rich family in the sign-in at the Reincarnation Center.
Why should the richest country be responsible for the care of their poor? Man, you never become the richest by giving money away!
3
What is wrong with you? Do you not understand? Helping poor impoverished individuals in any manner will put strains on the viability of the Tax Cut and Federal, State and Local budgets. You cannot eliminate these individuals by openly sentencing them to death, but you can do it covertly by not supplying needed nourishment, residences, healthcare, and minimal survival monetary stipends. Eliminating job and skill training further assures that they will not be able to support themselves. Presto, the same goal is accomplished, and these individuals disappear and are no longer a strain on the Tax Cut and federal, state, and local budgets. Hooray!
5
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Basic needs of human being at the lowest level should granted to all.
Shelter, food, safety, healthcare, employment, and education.
All these can be accomplished once the "pigs" get slaughtered.
We must stop legalizing corruption.
We must stop wasting taxpayer money.
We must take care of our citizens.
It will only happened when we have better requirements for those who run for office. It cannot be based on candidate wealth but rather on their qualities, background, experience, character, skills...matrix that can evaluate their integrity, leadership, and experience.
6
As someone else on this thread said—
"'Do Poor People Have a Right to Health Care?'
"That question should not need to be asked. Only in America....."
5
I thought our society owns you sustain thing for being a citizen of this country.
They should use us and our kids when they want to fight wars.
Why would Alex Azar be concerned with the plight of the poor and disadvantaged? He has been put in place by the most horrific administration and given the green light by the most horrific political party in our history to divert rights from the poor by stigmatizing them all into one category. These are shameful times and our country that has so much is taking the path of shame instead of the path of empathy.
1
If poor people don't have a right, then no one does. Rights aren't based on one's bank account.
Or we might as well bring back King George.
3
The answer to your question is "YES!" Everyone has a right to health care with no strings attached. We're the only western nation that doesn't guarantee universal health care. Here we are punishing the poor who are most in need and deserving of our aid and compassion. And, this just exposes the bigoted hypocrisy of those claiming we're a Christian nation, but work endlessly to punish the poor. It's a national disgrace by right-wing, Republican politicians who are all-in for the party of greed that waves the banner of Christian morality when it comes to abortion (except when its their mistress) or sexual harassment and infidelity, and all-out for true human need that is at the heart of christian belief and charity. It's time for all people of good will to reject the politics of inhumanity and immorality and embrace humane treatment for all.
3
A right to healthcare? Clearly, NO American outside the confines of the 1% has that. But in the U.S. of A., poor people don't even have a right to live. NYT readers who want to know what poverty in this country is really like have only to read Matthew Desmond's book "Evicted."
3
Only hypocrites would try to deny health care for the poor, the elderly, and children, while they take theirs for granted. Case in point, the republican-controlled congress. The problem for the G.O.P. is that, being mostly very well to do, their social distance does not allow them to walk in the shoes of the least among us. And Medicaid is a tremendous advancement in this highly unequal society of ours.
2
My wife and I do not deserve to die, but, we are chronically sick and have simply not died, yet. My wife has fibromyalgia and I have chronic fatigue syndrome. We are useless old cripples. Much like those we saw pushing stolen shopping carts through the snow drifts when the great communicator threw them out of their asylums, half a century ago. Just ignore us. We will die as fast as possible. So will everyone else.
1
This government has never been so out of touch with its people and their problems. The government appears to see its citizens who need assistance as the stereotyped lazy, overweight sloths waiting by the mailbox for a handout when in reality they’re regular people with kids working 2 jobs and struggling to make a rent payment. I wish all our perfumed ‘leaders’ from trump on down, could take a week during one of their many recesses and be mandated to volunteer time in a depressed area of their districts.
3
What does it mean to be born American if that doesn’t even guarantee basic healthcare, or conversely if one doesn’t feel one owes less fortunate fellow Americans a penny?
Republicans like to talk about identity, but to be American has never sounded more hollow.
4
"Do Poor People Have a Right to Health Care?" Seriously? It's 2018 in apparently the greatest country in the world (and coming soon, the universe).
Only in the United States would this be a topic for debate...
4
For too many Republicans, their sense of superiority depends on others' lives being miserable.
And if you make others' lives better, well, then, there is no basis for being "superior."
Life is a zero-sum game for Republicans.
4
Denying care for “vulnerable others”is usually mandated by healthy non others who have never been unemployed, sick, old or disabled. Keep hoping that you will not be one of those!
6
Conservatives would be happy to reinstitute slavery. Isn't that what forcing people to work in order to receive minimal subsistence is? Isn't that what a totally inadequate minimum wage is? Isn't that the counter-part of the racism that permeates Trump's immigration policies? The conservatives don't want to bring back the 1950s, they want the 1850s.
4
ALL of us have a right to Health Care. Medicare for all is a mainstream issue, now. Republicans have no answers to this issue, so don't vote for any of them. And, if there are any Democrats who are still arguing about this, like Diane Feinstein, don't vote for them, either. They will harm your family.
2
In answering this question, does the Editorial Board need to define the term "right"?
According to the laws of nature, the idea of rights for care seem beyond its structure. I could say that nature doesn't, for the sick and injured are disposed of with cruelty—thru acts of infection, starvation, and predation. But nature, always equivocal, bequeaths certain healing powers to us. It is clearly a part of nature's machinations—of life. Nature provides a beautiful system of care for the newborn, mostly maternal, but also fraternal. I watched a feral mother cat keep her litter of four alive and growing during the final weeks of winter, and it seemed clearly a law of nature, in that it can be observed consistently in animals and humans, with some phenomenal exceptions.
What is the purpose of government? To do for the citizens what they can't do for themselves. This does not mean giving out tax cuts to the 1%.
5
If one removes the emotional aspects of ethics and morality from this argument and views it purely pragmatically, it makes no financial sense to withhold Medicaid from those who cannot work. Even without insurance, they will be cared for, expensively, during health crises in emergency rooms. And this will be at the expense of those who refuse to offer them Medicaid. The cost of emergency care for the uninsured is simply passed on by insurance companies to those with healthcare coverage in the form of increased premiums. So like it or not, Trumpublicans, you will pay even more for the healthcare of those less fortunate Americans if you refuse them Medicaid.
4
What is the calculated cost of having so many people not covered? Ask the insurance companies? How do we connect the dots?
2
In San Francisco and Los Angeles the poor and mentally ill homeless are living on the streets, a visual reminder that Americans have a national housing and mental health problem that they refuse to solve at a national level. It is easy to get a bus ticket from all across the country to a warmer climate like the one in California. It is easy to look away.
Imagine a point in time if all the sick and disabled could come out of the shadows to the Kentucky Governor’s House so that Gov Bevin could get a visual perspective before his next move
against these Kentucky citizens.
4
Basic medical and health care is part of our social contract and something we should provide our less fortunate fellow Americans. (It could be you one day.) I concede that the SS Disability system has been abused by a minority of people who could work but can't find work, so they claim benefits for a range of ailments that would otherwise be manageable in a job setting. But I'll add that Medicaid is also abused by the for-profit corporate Healthcare industry. Taking benefits away is not how you solve either of those problems, though.
BTW, if we required people to work for benefits:
1. No one will hire the physically or mentally disabled
2. No one will hire anyone over the age of 40
This policy is just an excuse to take benefits away from people. You'll see more homeless on a street near you very soon...
Medicine has become a for-profit industry called "Healthcare." Medicaid is not the problem. It worked just fine as a government benefit UNTIL the privatizers got their hands on it. Always. Follow. The. Money.
As a side note, it's not a lost contrast that the article I read before this one "Health Insurers Warn of Market Turmoil as Trump Suspends Billions in Payments" is accompanied by a photo of Seema Verma (the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) in her inappropriately expensive pink Chanel suit and sunglasses... just another way of saying "I Really Don't Care Do U?"
1
The GOP, the party that espouses personal freedom from government control, seems obsessed about controlling the lives of those unfortunate enough to be unhappily pregnant women, people with illnesses, people who are starving, and people who are poor.
The hypocrisy sickens me, although thankfully not to the point where I might need a doctor.
The notion that anyone who needs social assistance is out to take advantage of wealthy taxpayers has become so entrenched in the minds of Republicans that one wonders if it is not their own guilt about taking advantage of their fellow Americans that is really driving them. It certainly is not reality that informs them.
It's been obvious that the GOP does not think poor people deserve healthcare. This is the party that has spent years lying about the Affordable Care Act while trying to sabotage it. They did so knowing that the ACA had extended coverage to about 20 million americans who needed it. That apparently didn't matter to the people who control the GOP. All that matters to them is that the ACA required the rich to pay additional taxes to extend coverage to the needy, and the rich are the only real constituency the GOP has. By effectively repealing the individual mandate, a republican idea from the bygone days when the GOP was interested in solving problems, the GOP has chosen the greedy and selfish over the legitimately needy. With Trump in the White House and do-nothing republican enablers in control congress, the moral bankruptcy of the GOP is complete.
2
Everyone is blessed with the gift of life, and most civilized societies created public schools for their children and health insurance for their residents as an inalienable human right, funded by the community and free at the school or hospital door. I'm a board member of Small Business California, and our 2017 Survey shows solid support for publicly funded health insurance in California for everyone, Questions 13 & 14. https://www.smallbusinesscalifornia.org/small-business-survey
Our Board passed this abbreviated resolution last spring. "Small Business California supports publicly funded, non-profit health insurance for California residents on the principles of universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness, and cost efficiencies. The benefits of publicly funded health insurance are manifold; creating the best attainable coverage for all residents with the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups, fairness of financial contributions and cost reductions through increased efficiency"
Americans have the right to become self-insured like we've done in part with Medicare/Medicaid for seniors and the disabled, with a system that will never require people remain paupers for Medicaid, so the CEOs in every company and janitors cleaning the offices at night have the same access to the medical community. Payments can be single payer like Medicare Part A and B or multi payer like France where non-profit insurance companies to pay claims. We can, too
Health care is neither a right nor a privilege.
We simply must have a healthy citizenry to have a functioning my society.
5
This appears to be another government Catch-22 - some can’t have healthcare if they don’t work and some can’t work unless they have healthcare. The notion any benefit must be earned may be the majority opinion, leaving one’s conscience free of guilt and an excuse to be unsympathetic toward those who cannot fit a requirement, but animals are better treated. The framing of the argument regarding healthcare as a right or a privilege is immoral and inhuman on its face because the latter excludes all people who do not fit the privileged category. The fact the argument is framed at all comes from an ideology aiming to eliminate all government benefits. I suggest reading some GOP House proposed budgets. The consequence is human suffering in a country wealthy enough to provide but too selfish and arrogant to do the right thing. Such Ivory Tower thinking is purposely blind to realities on the ground to satisfy individual greed. There should not be an argument regarding healthcare and the fact there is indicates deliberate heartlessness toward the poor and working poor no matter how much lipstick is applied.
Apply for social benefits. Now move to a red state and apply for social benefits. Republicans are intentionally trying to punish people for needing help. If you aren't rich enough to avoid asking the government for help, you don't deserve it. I'd say "punitive requirements" is absolutely the correct phrase.
1
Not a "right" an obligation to care for those in need in our nation. A kindness repayed in KIND, with labor that again repays the individual with skills.
The princess of humanity's worst darkness, Ayn Rand, is all over this administration. "If you can get away with it, do it." They like to use bumber sticker sloganeering such as, "No one said life is fair." Well, life is never going to get "fair" for the poor when the rich game the system for "fairness only for the rich."
Using lame theories of lifting oneself up by your bootstraps is classic libertarian mantra. But when you are too poor to even own "bootstraps," the idea of lifting yourself out of poverty can become more nonsensical. And the causes of, and rising out of, poverty are not formulaic, contrary to conservative and libertarian thinking. Retracting, or restricting, access to quality healthcare from the poor, assures them of health problems which can keep children out of school more often, and adults from finding work more often than not.
Then there is the matter of being born to a poor family in a poor region of a traditionally poor state. A state with higher numbers of poverty have a hard time securing the taxes needed to build quality school systems and hiring qualified teachers. Coal barons and other controlling interests in these states keep taxes rates very low for themselves, making the needed revenue hard to find.
These problems affecting the poor, and even creating a class of American we would classify as "poor" are designed by the rich to "keep the poor in their places" and out of sight.
1
Absolutely poor people have the right to have access to affordable quality health care. Since we all have a use by mortality date there are no "poor people". There are only people aka our brothers and sisters.
Speaker of the House Paul Davis Ryan has been on the government benefits including health care and employment welfare dole ever since his father died when he was a teen.
Ryan has never worked in the private sector. Ryan has never been bravely honorable and patriotic enough to volunteer to wear the military uniform of any American armed force. Ryan has never been humble humane and empathetic enough to voluteer to perform any community civil human rights service. Ryan dismisses other human beings with his pedigree as "takers".
Jesus Christ expected that we treat each other as well as ourselves. And the sick are especially deserving of our compassion and mercy. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were enshrined as the divine natural equal certain unalienable rights of all people when this nation declared it's independence.
3
Is this the Conservative argument against government-assisted healthcare?
1. Private industry and capitalism can better care for people in all ways than can incompetent, noncompetitive, and expensive government providers. Numerous anecdotes and studies supporting this contention, this fact, provided upon request.
2. In America, our success is related to our work ethic. Here, if you don't work, you don't eat. And, as is notorious, millions of "disabled" workers fake an inability to labor for their own keep. Everyone would like an easier life and more money, but that's just not realistically and justifiably on the menu. Maybe on some other planet it is.
3. If you give Big Government an inch, it will take a mile. Big Brother already has a dangerous amount of power; let us not continue to feed Leviathan.
4. Humans function best and happiest when they are self-supporting. A handout is, for a person with self-esteem, always an insult: An earned meal tastes much better than one from a soup kitchen sitting among the dregs of society. It's shaming and shameful: an awful existence.
5. An America at its best is one that can stand on its own two feet. We need to provide jobs, real jobs, not government-created superfluous jobs, that allow people to be independent and free, like an American should, not like a welfare moocher.
6. Most, if not all Americans, can and would love to stand tall, but our nanny state encourages malingerers, helping neither themselves nor anyone else.
I think you described it well. A rather cruel ideology, in my opinion, that believes only the worst of humanity.
A conservative would never take a handout and would always stand on his own. Everyone else is a moocher. It is a view totally lacking in empathy and full of self-righteousness.
5
But is that just how they see things, as you see differently? Were they taught and rewarded for their viewpoint?
Could both views be valid to various degrees?
Its hard to support yourself when you have a debulitating illness. Also, i would LOVE to see these "stats and figures" you claim to have. My anecdotes are the multitudes of countries making universal healthcare work. People occasionally need help. Put down Ayn Rand long enough and you may see that.
1
Why should any non disabled adult not work and expect to be housed, fed and cared for by the taxer payer? There are some people like that! Don’t contribute anything to society but find it normal to the recipient of many benefits!
2
And, there are "rich' people who have gamed the system, broke laws, and otherwise accumulated great wealth through means other than hard work.
1
One doesn’t excuse the other, because in the end it is at the expense of the hard working middle class.
I am 100% disabled (according to court decision and about 20 physicians)
How am I supposed to work?
4
Penny-wise and pound-foolish is the GOP’s true motto. They aren’t actually saving money with such policies. But they are effectively “othering” and cruelly stigmatizing marginalized individuals, all whom need healthcare to survive.
The GOP gets away with this because they pretend that there is massive fraud and waste in the system. We’ve now lived under 40 years of conservative rule. Shouldn’t their “get tough on the poor” schemes have paid rich dividends by now?
Can we please STOP calling the GOP “pro-life” or “small government” or “fiscally conservative” or “anti-regulation?” They are NONE of these things. They waste massive dollars, set up complicated police state compliance regimes to worsen health outcomes. They aren’t saving money or shrinking the government as is witnessed by their current anti-immigration efforts. They are merely diverting money that could better provide “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for so many by criminalizing and pushing our neighbors, family and friends into darkness and despair. They will still be in our healthcare system once they are jettisoned from the roles. Crisis care costs much more than preventative and maintenance care. When you couple that with the money being wasted through the incessant policing of people whom could just receive care, there is often negative return on investment, unmasking the real goal of the policy. To create scapegoats to draw attention away from the failures of GOP policies.
3
It's very easy to give away--or propose giving away--other people's money.
Americans are fair. If poor people are able to work, they should do so in return for their government support (e.g., welfare, medical benefits, etc.). If they are unable to work, they should receive benefits without a work requirement.
1
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are all affected by one's health. Health care (or the lack thereof) deeply affects one's prospects in this country.
As ever, you can judge the merits of a civilization by how well they treat their poorest, weakest, and neediest members. That says everything.
The GOP's "kiss up/kick down" approach to society -- where they enrich the already rich, comfort the comfortable, pamper the privileged, and protect the powerful (and, by way of contrast, hurting the poor and the weak) -- shows them to be the morally bankrupt vanguard of a less-civilized and barbaric America.
The country must do better.
6
"A country’s deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens." Agree, the current policies of cruelty being pursued and implemented by Trumpism apparently reflects the values of "Christian" Republicans who voted for and support the immorality of Trump and in this instant HHS. Thus, America has little regard for our fellow citizens who are the "Vulnerable" in our midst but have nothing but worship and adoration of the 1%, i.e, massive tax cuts!
"Is this how America is going to be?"
It will be if voters keep on not doing their job.
1
Here is how I wound up on Medicaid. All you righteous people can judge me if you want. It started in 2004 when I was fired for no cause from a position as a Scientist (Ph.D.) from a major mid- western University Medical School by a foreign national "MD" who was my "boss" at the time. I had a wife with severe MS and an 8 year old child at the time. I scramble to become re- employed by sending out applications to other PIs (primary investigators) at this same school, because I didn't want to move again. I had just moved from Los Angeles at the time and my child was in school. I have a stack of rejection letters to prove that if you get fired, no one will hire you. It was not I who got me and my family onto Medicaid. It was my wife. After constantly being rejected I just resigned myself to the fact that I would never be re- employed as a Scientist. So I accepted having to go on Medicaid because my wife needed medical care as did my daughter. For myself, I really don't care.
5
Yes, poor people (all people) should have a right to health care. For those arguing on cost (wrong argument), it costs far less to take care of all of us. For those arguing for work requirements (or some sort of contribution), as the Board points out, most of those who can work, do.
As a country, we have the ability to take care of everyone -- and we should. "Freeloaders" like my friend who lost everything - her home, her job - everything she had and then went on medicaid all in an effort to get her 3 year old daughter treatment for cancer -- deserve a helping hand.
Some of these folks who are keen on using wealth as a measure of righteousness and to judge whether their fellow citizens -- no, fellow humans -- should have the right to see a doctor when they are sick should take another look at Matthew 25:40 ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
6
Maybe a better question is: should corporations have the right to profit off of sickness and illness? Should the right to make profits be privileged over the lives of individuals?
We have the most expensive healthcare system in the industrialized world. Everyone knows this and that other countries have found solutions to this problem. In reality it isn’t about costs because Medicare for All would be cheaper than the current system and it isn’t about health but rather that there is a large swath of the country whose primary ideology is cruelty for its own sake. You see this in the children separation policy as well. There is no reason to do it. It costs more. It’s inefficient and the only explanation is that there are people that enjoy the suffering of other people but come with illogical excuses to hide behind. America has an unhealthy relationship to punishment and being punitive to people. Some people take pleasure in seeing and imagining other people suffering both in the abstract and in real life. It’s disgusting.
1
All great points in this editorial, rational and almost self-evident. What is missing however, is the elephant in the room: the rank cruelty and sadism within the Republican party toward the less fortunate. There is an appalling lack of humanity and compassion which is widespread across so many issues. Conservatives want to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, even public education. They want to dismantle all the pillars that support a strong middle class and allow us to grow old with a shred of dignity. Not to mention tearing children away from migrant parents for the crime of fleeing violence and desperately seeking a better life. Incredibly, most of these people call themselves Christians. Somewhere, Jesus Christ must be rolling His eyes.
1
The fact that this is even being debated is a sad statement on the low moral character of, and high level of cruelty in, American society. It amazes me that the country does not yet have single-payer, universal health care, even now years after the New Deal and Great Society and President Carter. It's like Americans decided in 1980 to vote in Satan. So very sad.
5
People are more than monetized values in our society. They are our neighbors, and the kids our kids attend school with. They walk our streets, and live in our towns and cities. Call me old fashioned, but I would like to see all of the people in my community getting good health care, and being well fed whether they work or not. I would like to see their kids dressed adequately in all weather. Making health care, food, and shelter based on a persons ability to work was known as "slavery" or "indentured servitude" in past centuries. We can do better. We are a "Christian" nation, and even the least among us do deserve a right to live. It may be that some of those who are getting support are just plain lazy. So what? Many of the very wealthiest of us are greedy and selfish! We don't fault them.
2
A basic goal of government according to the Constitution is to provide for the general welfare of the people. Forcing sick people to work to be entitled to health care is about as far from that goal as the Republicans can get. This is simply cruel, nothing more.
5
I think it’s pretty clear that there is no “right” to healthcare in the US. (There’s no right to housing either except in NYC.). But it would be so much smarter for the US to provide a low cost, not so great healthcare system for every human being within our borders including the undocumented. No MRI’s for sprained ankles but free cheap anti-biotics, birth control and pre-natal care. And definitely no costly medical tests and procedures for the elderly and terminally ill. Death panels (rationing health care sensibly) are a great idea.
You ask, “Is this how America is going to be?” This is how America exists today. From sea to shining sea we are ignoring the better angels of our nature. The Army discharges soldiers they deem a security risk because of their nationality. The government separated children from their parents at the border to “teach the parents a lesson.” The President of the United States calls a US Senator a racial slur, and ridicules a US Representative while making fun of a disabled reporter. The leader of the Senate refuses to hold a hearing for a Supreme Court candidate put forward by President Obama. Medicaid work requirements are just another slip as we slide into that shining sea.
2
Any Medicaid minimum work-requirement assumes that private employers will knowingly hire someone burdened with chronic health problems. In a perfect, charitable loving Christian world they might, but in the Era of Trump ours is decidedly hateful, selfish, and unChristian to its artow,
Employers understand perfectly well that unhealthy employees are unreliable and will raise their monthly health insurance and workman compensation premiums. Chronically ill people aren’t able to hide their condition. As a result, they are frequently discriminated against. All a work-requirement does is eliminate their already limited and unsatisfactory healthcare options.
3
But for the grace of God, any working person can be temporarily "poor." All it takes is a pink slip and the loss of the employee insurance coverage. How long does it take to get another job with health benefits when you've been laid off? At best, a matter of months. The day after your insurance coverage ends, you can be in a car accident. Or have a heart attack. Or a childbirth that goes very wrong or a very premature baby that needs intensive care and multiple surgeries. And if you were't "poor" before that, you are now. The unconscionable costs of both insurance and medical care make many already-working Americans poor. Let's do something about THAT.
8
Anyone reading this editorial who lives in an advanced nation other than the United States can only shake their head in wonder that the piece needed to be written. America, you can do better.
Medicare for all.
4
If there is a right to life then there is a right to health care that saves and protects life. If Republicans do not understand this then they need to shut up about being pro-life, because they are not.
6
Some of us are on Medicaid AND working full time.
6
This is austerity pure and simple, and as proven by the UK, austerity leads to increased poverty, homelessness and it kills people. 55,000-250,000 people died as a direct result in the UK, which earned the UN's condemnation.
It's criminal to force poor people to work for their basic needs like food stamps and medical care. It's a new form of slavery and an economic holocost. Of all the wrongs Trump and the US government are doing, this is amongst the worst. And it's all based on populus hate and ignorance of the poor, and will penalize those who most need medical benefits. Really shameful coming from a first world nation.
1
Much like Scrooge’s response to giving slight provisions to the poor, today’s GOP wants work camps and prisons. Or frankly for these folks to just die
Trump’s core evangelical right white men and women do not want their tax money spent to aid the poor, to comfort the ill, to teach children, or to support the common good.
The nation is already more and more separate and unequal. And that is not by chance, but by Trump’s core’s choice.
1
And by beloved Russia tampering with our elections and dis-informing our public — our neighbors.
Does a peer person have a right to heathcare? Yes. Public Hospital Emergency rooms, by law, may not refuse a poor person. Look it up.
1
I'm just assuming that you meant "poor people"
So you want to send them all to the ER. Well who's going to pay for that? ER care is very expensive compared to regular care and often has worse outcomes. It's certainly cheaper to get incremental healthcare (blood pressure management, diabetes management, etc) for people than to wait for them to have a heart attack or stroke.
Beyond all the rhetoric, it would be cheaper for the country if we had universal healthcare.
1
That is emergency care, not health care. BIG difference.
1
It’s all about disenfranchising voters in order to maintain control over the political apparatus by the wealthy ruling class. Denying people benefits that can be made available from government. Misinforming them. Denying that citizens of the wealthiest nation in history are entitled to basic personal rights and financial support, in all forms, which can be put forth in our prosperous society is shameful. This is just more sham Conservatism. Why did Kentucky’s state legislature decline to expand Medicaid under the ACA for its vulnerable population in the first place? Cause the ruling conservatives will be displaced if regular citizens understand clearly that they lose when wealthy conservatives lord over them and recognize even one good reason to wait in long lines and visit the voting booth (with valid identification to prevent voting fraud of course). Now that the rebellion is put down again, when is my tee time darling?
It is said that if drugs for chronic common ailments like diabetes, hypertension and such were made available for free, with basic regular checkups, the cost savings would be extraordinary. I’d throw in free birth control on top of that which would go a long way to reducing poverty in a couple generations.
We spend money on the stupidest things in this country.
2
Nothing exposes the sheer unscientific (non-factual or ideologically driven models), elitist, selfish, Plutocratic, self-righteous demagoguery that passes for Conservationism as per the GOP of today than their massive assault on any notion of comprehensive quality healthcare being a universal right.
The above I state with confidence - it's objectively verifiable beyond a reasonable doubt and any intellectually honest jury would have to rule such.
I will add my more debatable opinion that the JC to which most of the GOP claim they piously genuflect would be aghast at their lack of understanding of/adherence to His central messages. But then I freely recognize one can use the Bible to prove anything - including contradicting what was proved by the same Bible.
But to the most important point for America.
Today's GOP is counter-productive to the advancement of society in general.
Their models and actions don't comport with reality. They are purposely meant to destroy for ideological purposes - without offering cogent alternatives.
Or their models wastefully address made-up problems mostly to fire up their base.
I do not discount true conservative models - but the GOP's duplicitous ones are not useful to any purposes most American's hold valuable.
I know 42% disagree with me - and too often they rule election days.
But now it's existential - that 58% (conservatives, progressives) must abandon apathy/cynicism/differences - vote and vote to remove the cancer!
4
The problem is classic: the Republicans aren't affected by their policies. They all have health care, provided by the tax payers. Case in point, Paul Ryan. Ryan is so adamant about cutting Medicare, Food Stamps, and Social Security, yet, as a young man he was helped by Social Security survivor benefits after the death of his father. I'm sure in his pea brain, Ryan feels he is worthy of that help, but poor people, and people of color are not. And this is the core of the Republican soulless perspective. The Republicans would be fine with these programs if they went to white people, is the "other" with whom they have a problem.
Sure, lets get people working. That has nothing to do with the health care crisis in the US.
There are so many ways that all of us are being taken advantage of by the health care system that is in place: by drug companies who extort those in need by rapacious pricing; by insurance companies that deny coverage and skin an average of 20% off the premiums for themselves (compared to 5% for Medicare); by the deadbeats who will not pay for insurance but then show up at ERs for mandated care and skip out on the bill; by astronomical billing for unneeded services by some providers; by industrial poisoning that goes unregulated and damages the health of so many; by work place discrimination of those with medical conditions and on and on and on. The poor who receive the most paltry coverage are not the problem.
Universal health care is the only solution!!!
1
the world is awash with animals and humans that get eaten or starve to death, or die from injury. Such is life.
We have no rights to healthcare from the acting of being born per se, nor is such written in the constitution nor the Bill of Rights.
It's not a "right', it's a privilege and an expensive one.
1
Which America do you live in?
1
When poor people are given coverage that far exceeds that which people who work and pay a huge chunk of their salaries get, there will be resentment. When worker complaints about this disparity are ignored, their anger turns towards the people receiving benefits that they are not.
Society has turned into a game in which people self-assign themselves a place on the "value ladder" and expect benefits, etc. to be commensurate with their place on the ladder. "I work hard and make six figures but can't afford daycare. I should get subsidies." "I'm college educated. I should make much more than a person that attaches mirrors to cars." "I pay for my health insurance and can't go to Fancy Hospital, but someone who sits home all day on Medicaid can go there." "I pay $3 grand a month for my apartment. The person next door pays $2k. Why should they pay less than I do?"
Everyone is on the lookout for people who have what they perceive are undeserved benefits and perks and instead of trying to improve their own lot, they focus their energies on taking down others. This is the mindset today.
1
It seems odd to me that the strongest argument for universal healthcare is the one least often used: how does this differ from other universal services? Should police protection only be offered to those who work How about fire protection or the use of EMS services?
If the concern is grafting, then look at government subsidies for profitable businesses. Why is it okay to exercise the public purse to build sports arenas that wiull then be used by sports franchises with multi-million dollar players and billionaire owners. Surely that is far worse than helping the poor survive, but apparently, not.
3
Work for my Medicare payments? That might have been possible when I was 55, or 60, or even 65. But now I'm 70 and cannot find work. Excellent health and a spotless work record means less to potential employers than the year I graduated college. So, yes, I am experiencing age discrimination in the upper tiers, and there's no way for me to work for the Medicare I need.
Meanwhile, there's a mentally crumbling over-70 dotard in the White House who kidnapped 3,000 immigrant children and has promised to kidnap even more underage hostages. Shouldn't he have been jailed by now?
6
Many people who work and buy their medical insurance perceive medicaid recipients as receiving better healthcare than they do. They don't have copays so they can go to the doctor when they need too. When you have to juggle rent/food/clothing etc vs seeing the doctor for that odd pain and paying $20-$50 out of the tight budget...well food wins.
8
To even suggest that the International Mafia Top 1% Global Financial Elite Robber Baron/radical religion Good Old Boys' cabal who have taken over OUR governments at all levels don't "understand" what they are doing is ludicrous.
They believe they are the "chosen ones". They believe they should have it all - OUR resources, taxpayer dollars, retirement dollars, interest dollars, consumer dollars, and medical services. They believe 99% of us are just put on this earth to support them.
They think WE THE PEOPLE are just the great unwashed masses. Peons. Stupid. Too fearful to take them on.
Sorry boys and girls. You are WRONG. WE THE PEOPLE are coming for you in every election until we preserve/restore true democracy in OUR United States of America and the world.
WE will not allow you to start WW3 to feed your insatiable, demented greed/lust for power over us.
The Women's March the day after the sham election proved it. The #MeToo movement and ouster of predatory men in supposed power proves it. Marches/rallies/demonstrations for the environment, education, immigration and health care prove it. Multiple lawsuits by states and organizations - and individuals like Stormy Daniels - prove it. Courageous women who are confronting mafia operatives while they eat prove it.
Good Job, Good People of America and the world. WE must keep the pressure up until we have purged them from every elected office in the world and elected/hired Socially Conscious Women to balance it.
5
Of course there is no such thing as a right to health care and never will be. The notion of that is patently absurd. ANything that inherently requires technology, research, and monetary resources is NOT a right and never will be. Public healthcare is a luxury of a productive society. I don't mind the argument (and tend to agree) that public healthcare is a wise investment (to a degree and not an unlimited extenet) but it is most certainly NOT a right. Electricity is not a right, either.
5
You are the second commenter I have seen who describes him/herself as a doctor (see Ny surgeon) and who denies that health care can be someone's right as a human being.
Why should "technology, research and monetary resources" determine whether or not something is a human right?
Over many years the American public has been throwing away the ideals behind the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and has been moving away from the post-world war two consensus on the rights of mankind.
Here is Article 25 from the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
Is this now meaningless?
4
No, that always was a meaningless statement. Governmental and United Nations statements are full of absurdities and invalid ideas--this is not news. No right requires money and technology. You clearly misunderstand the distinction between and a right and privilege.
Healthcare is a series of investments by society--some are wise (ie, immunizations) and some are not. Some also thankfully reflect the values of society (caring for disabled) and some reflect an inability to accept the inherent mortal nature of the human existence. Be thankful that your society has the monetary resources and technology and values to provide some healthcare but don't view it as a right. For in an economic depression, I think you would see your healthcare "rights" disappear quite quickly.
Are there many elements of our environment that don't require technology, research, and monetary resources? I think even the most destitute among us has a right to expect the same level of food and water safety as the wealthy, The same with the air we breath.
When I drop a letter in a USPS mail box, I rightfully expect the same service as the millionaire who just dropped her letter ahead of me. Same with making a phone call.
The complex air traffic control system provides the same level of safety for coach and first class. Same with water, rail and road travel.
Access to our massive healthcare system is likewise a right to the the extent that adequate health is a right. If we as a nation decide that adequate health is a privilege we will also have to decide what to to do with the treatment denied sick. Should make for an interesting, if bizarre, debate.
"But while most Americans agree that poor people should have health insurance, they also believe that people of all income levels should earn their benefits." --- So what bipartisan solutions could a majority of Americans agree upon?
Every American could "earn their benefits" by doing community service in the years after high school. Say 24 months of credible service in any of the vast array of areas where their contributions would be positive for the country.
Last century saw public works done with CCC & WPA labors.
AmeriCorps VISTA has been around for a long time. Peace Corps, church groups, etc.
It is quite disingenuous of the GOP and the Trump administration to come down so hard on Medicaid recipients when just last year the President's official (FY 2018) Budget request to Congress called for an orderly shutdown of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) including all CNCS programs, such as Senior Corps and AmeriCorps (which includes VISTA and NCCC).
And don't forget military service. Young men and women could "earn their benefits" by serving two years in any of the military service branches as well.
6
When we focus on rich and poor we forget about the majority who are in the middle. Many people are unable to afford even basic health care for themselves and children and they do not qualify for Medicaid or other types of assistance. Don't these people matter? Shouldn't they have the same ability to exercise their right to life, liberty, and to pursue happiness? If so, then the discussion needs to include them and how they can get access to needed care.
I have to pay 10% of my yearly income to have insurance and meet my deductible when my plan kicks in. Statement of fact and nothing more. I am better off than most of my co-workers because they makes $10-15k less and still have to pay the same amounts. Many people are put into bankruptcy because of medical costs even more are one paycheck away from being homeless and bankrupt. The US is supposed to be better than this.
13
Cutting costs is a great idea, but the GOPers want to cut costs by penalizing poor people instead of cutting costs where they originate, by reducing the high cost of delivering health care. It has gotten to the point that finding a physician who accepts Medicare as payment in full is near impossible, to say nothing of Medicaid. The entire health care delivery system is way too expensive - that is where cost cutting must start.
7
To all the commentators insisting that Medicaid recipients do some kind of work to receive benefits - if the United States were to enact universal single payer health care, i.e. health care paid through taxation, would every American be required to work? Is every American required to work to enjoy the benefits of roads built with taxes? For police and fire protection? Of course not.
In a civilized society, the common good requires we care for everyone equally and to the best of our combined abilities. The problem is not the Medicaid "takers", it's that some America can't leave behind the Horatio Alger and cowboy mythology. As a nation we have moved beyond that period in history.
It is time to recognize that we are all in this together. It's time to work together to realize the Constitutional requirement that we the people, through our elected government, provide for the general welfare of all Americans.
12
There are people who will never be able to work due to circumstances well beyond their control. I think it is a small part of society that will begrudge those folks health care or a decent life. Most of us consider helping them and their families the reasonable cost of belonging to a decent society. I think where some people would draw the line is, for example, the "disabled", smoking, tattoo covered, welfare recipient in the ER for another breathing treatment. If you're trying to support your family and pay for health care and then are asked to pick up the tab for these folks it's bound to cause some resentment. Over the last 50 years especially, it seems avoiding the cost/consequences for your behavior and getting others to cover your expenses has become part and parcel of u.s. life. Whether it's corporations like GE that don't pay taxes on billions of earnings, or people who choose to do drugs then claim they're disabled and can't work it seems the rest of us are on the hook for this and we don't like it. As a first step we should be taxing the things that cause much of our health problems: sugar, tobacco, alcohol, gasoline, bullets, etc. this money should go directly to pay for the problems they cause. do this and I won't mind paying so much for the health care of others. The government constantly picks winners and losers. Time to use this to help with costs associated with bad behaviour.
5
You're making a strong argument that if your a poor and lack the resources to support your family, it is not the wisest choice to have four more kids, especially if the baby daddy is unwilling to participate in the childrens' support.
1
If we give the corporations and 1% another huge tax cut they would use the money to create jobs, and more jobs means more Americans back to work earning money. It is a win -win! You don't believe me? Surely THIS TIME the plan would work! Come on let's give it ANOTHER try.
6
I certainly agree with the article's conclusion:
"A country’s deepest values are reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. So as officials consider the future of Medicaid, they must ask themselves: Is this how America is going to be?"
For their own sake as individuals, those officials might best begin by turning from their spreadsheets to take a private moment with their mirror and consider the scriptural passage that concludes:
"Whatsoever you have done to the least of these, you have done unto me."
Come the end of term, it is the spiritual account that outweighs all others.
4
The deepest values of our nation, as expressed in the Constitution, say no such thing...
The purpose of our federal government is to provide for the orderly...well...er...government of the citizens of the nation, not to right every wrong or to correct every problem that people face...
If people want their states to provide such levels of service to their citizens, they are free to do so...Indeed, the Tenth Amendment clearly states that the federal government is precluded from having a say on all matters not enumerated in the founding document...
Under the well-defined legal principle that all clauses of a document have weight and must be given weight equal to all other clauses in the document, the Tenth Amendment clearly means something...
I suspect that one of the problems that the left is having with Trump's willingness to appoint judges that believe the the Constitution means what it says is that judges so believing will seriously question whenever the left tries to find un-enumerated rights for the federal government and to review with skepticism cases in which the left's previous extension of government power have created rights not specifically granted...In short, I believe that it is the responsibility of of the states to formulate such programs -- I note that both Vermont and California in the recent past toyed with universal health care. The extreme cost were the programs downfall.
1
Unless your an atheist like me, in which case you only have this life to live, and like all others, you have a choice. Our lives are not our own to do with as we will. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness we create our future.
With work requirements on Medicaid, it means we'd be dealing with more people who are incapable of doing the jobs they were hired to do because they must remain employed to receive healthcare, potentially that is keeping them alive or functional human beings. When our workforce is already about to be decimated with the oncoming automation of millions of jobs, this seems like an exceptionally bad idea.
I think many Trump supporters begrudge providing people with Medicaid, SNAP and other safety net programs because they perceive these programs as freebies handed out to the undeserving. I think this boils down to envy - many Trump supporters work really hard, but no matter how hard they work, decent medical care remains out of reach for them. I think envy of others receiving benefits that are unattainable for oneself is basic human nature.
The same mindset was apparent in the Wisconsin protests over public employee pensions. The people supporting terminating pension plans for public employees should have been demanding restoration of pensions in the private sector.
I will never understand why people push to strip others of access to healthcare when they should demand parity for themselves in the form of healthcare for all. Pensions, too. Once upon a time, everyone had pensions.
The American way - level the playing field by making things worse for everyone instead of finding ways to make thing better for everyone.
19
As a Wisco resident, you are right on the money regarding the 2010 Act 10 protests are concerned.
Sorry, I have no envy for anyone forced to live in poverty...Nor does anyone else I know, conservative OR liberal.
I do, however, sympathize with those who have earned their money complaining about government taking it to provide rights not contained in the Consititution and for funding programs that have over the past five decades demonstrated abject failure.
Pouring more money into a project that can't achieve its goals is rank stupidity. And it is willful ignorance on the part of those who so advocate.
How do we reconcile the fact that 25% of the country is dependent on Medicaid while our President is constantly touting our lowest unemployment numbers ever? How can it be that all of these employed Americans can’t afford health insurance? Isn’t that a major part of the problem?
9
Excellent point. As globalization has taken hold, and taxes have been cut for the top including corporations and we've shipped our decent jobs overseas and imported poor, unskilled, uneducated people the middle class and it's secure, jobs with good benefits have gone away. Any job is now considered a great thing, even if you can't live on it. The race to the bottom is well under way. The only upside is that we wont have to argue about immigration when the u.s. looks like Central America and most everywhere else. What will be the point of coming here then?
Because a lot of the jobs people have are not aligned with their education level. A lot of the creation of jobs and businesses were like mine, just me doing contract work and having to have a business to protect myself from litigation or high taxes. As a business, I can write off my supplies for work, as an individual I cant. Although frankly, a very large portion of this problem is that you can work 40-60 hours a week and still be below the poverty line. You've got to have 2 jobs to get that many hours because places won't give people full time hours because that means supplying full time benefits.
1
I'm not sure if your 25% number is correct, but the medicaid rolls have increased in the past decade due to the inclusion in most states of the near poor for medicaid eligibility as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Also, don't forget that poor seniors who need long term care also depend on medicaid. So, lots of children, working poor, and poor seniors add to the number of recipients that are either working or unable to work.
We could put this monster to bed with a single payer system. The GOP boogyman will not prevail forever. With Trump's latest assault on the ACA, those with individual policies will see a massive increase in premiums. Those with pre-existing conditions need to get their wills updated, as living will no longer be affordable.
I am a Medicare recipient and it is a great program for the elderly. Not perfect, but much better than the garbled private plans with the deductibles and co-pays. It could be the same for everyone if we could just get Congress out of the way.
15
I am on Medicare as well. I pay as much for Medicare as I did for private, much better insurance. This is because I continue to work. Single payer is great if you don't work, but if you do, the money is going to have to come from somewhere as there is no free lunch, no matter what the left says. I will admit that getting rid of the bloated over head of administrators, insurance companies and middle management that typifies our new "business" model of medicine will certainly help.
1
Short answer, no. More so every day. It is not a money issue. It is wrapped up around the single payer solution. So, again, as President Obama said, elections have consequences. Just wait till we get the packed court. There will be many other rights - and regulations - we take for granted that will be bye bye.
6
I agree with Clara Coen. Medicare works well. Insurance companies can still sell supplemental although their profits will probably not be so high.(Boo Hoo). If the US is attacked by a foreign nation we expect our citizens (Many of them poor) to enlist and fight. Why is the fight against disease any different. Protect our citizens. Finally I also agree with NY Surgeon. We should educate and expect healthy living choices. Can anyone tell me why cigarettes are still legal in this country?
4
How 'bout alcohol?
You have a very warped concept of how an insurance company works...
They make very little money on the premiums themselves -- They make it on the opportunity to invest the premium dollars received and held pending the distribution of those dollars to settle claims...The sums that they are, as a consequence, able to invest is staggering, and a 4% return on tens of billions of dollars accrues profits at a pretty good rate with comparatively little effort.
This is another sign that America has lost its compassion. This is just cruel and inhumane. No other developed nation has work requirements to receive a health benefit. A nation must look after people who have health issues and are unable to work. Everyone has a right to universal healthcare.
8
A better question is: Does society have an interest in the healthcare of sick people?
Does it matter if the illness is highly communicable, or, if left untreated, routinely becomes much more serious? Does it matter that antibiotic resistant infections are more serious in hospitals that serve poor, sick communities? Does it matter if the sick person is the parent of dependent children, or the son or daughter of a dependent parent?
The answer is clearly Yes.
7
Guaranteed rights, by definition, do not cost others when they are exercised. My free speech may impact you but it doesn’t require you to spend a single cent. My free assembly only requires that you do not attempt to deny me that ability. A “right” to healthcare or housing or education or a guaranteed income or job all can me with a (hefty) price tag. That makes them not rights but privileges.
4
Question for "conservatives"?
If work is a requirement for Medicaid (for insurance),
Why is health insurance a requirement for work?
2
Because someone with skin in the game is a lot more conscious of the trade-offs than someone who does not.
The actual crux of the matter is that the GOP is in the control of white plutocrats who love their ideology but have no compassion for humanity- to them the rest of us might as well be fishes swimming in someone else's bowl.
They have used their money to convince others in their party that the government has no role in helping people- that this is the province of charity- especially religious organizations.
It should be obvious that a hodge-podge of charitable organizations is no way of dealing with serving the basic human needs of society in the modern era- it certainly is to the citizens of every other wealthy modern nation.
However, this is the greatest nation on earth. We allow great wealth to purchase great influence
4
If the answer is “yes” and the government is the guarantor of the right up to their usual final move, bringing guns to bear, then you are arguing that people, poor or not, have a right to a medical professional’s time and labor.
Be careful with setting this precedent.
1
All people in USA should be insured under Medicare/Medicaid for all. It's a moot point, but we cannot have it due to unfair representation. In the article, the authors refer to the 'Montanas,' would be nice to know which one gets FAR more money from the Feds than pays into the federal goverment. The answer is easy...BOTH. But alas, they get four Senators! WAKE UP PEOPLE.
3
It seems Republicans aren't much concerned with the optics of a line of people in wheelchairs with cerebral palsy or MS, paraplegics, people with respiratory or heart disease carrying oxygen. All looking to snag that one available job shoveling coal.
The GOP's lack of humanity is appalling. If only they could be plucked out their comfortable lives, and for a few months put in the condition and place of folks who rightfully are entitled to Medicaid. I wonder how many would come to an awakening.
6
Whether anyone has a right to something is often a loaded question.
Whatever the answer, no society benefits from having an unhealthy, poorly educated, and resentful underclass. Apart from a moral obligation to help the needy, pure self interest dictates that we help them to be employable, educated, and even content. Think of that!
6
I can't recommend this comment enough.
1
The next thing the heartless conservatives will do is re-establish the "work house", a concept that was popular in the days of Charles Dickens and whose abuses he often wrote about. At that time, it was "thought" that giving the hungry a bowl of diluted soup -- free of charge-- would only make them lazy. So, they had to work for their "gruel" -- cracking rocks or building unneeded roads to nowhere ....... Unfortunately, little thought is given to the billions of dollars doled out for corporate welfare, tax perks for the wealthy etc. Somehow, all that doesn't count and for some strange reason that defies understanding, does not likewise make THEM lazy. Maybe that's what they mean by "American Exceptionalism".
14
The Times asks, "Is this how America is going to be?"
If only Times editors had asked themselves before the 2016 election, and before they went all-in for Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders.
No, America doesn't have to be like this. America, if it elects Sanders and Sanders supporters, can and will have national health care insurance just like that enjoyed by the people of every other advanced nation on the face of the planet.
If only Times editors had considered deeply before the election, and not engaged in a concerted effort to stop Senator Sanders.
If only.
3
It defies reason that so-called "conservatives" cannot distinguish an investment from an expense, as any freshman econ major understands. It's written into the tax code they worship over any social cause. It's why our healthcare costs are so much higher than the EU and other enlightened nations. Miserly, short-term thinkers have no comprehension of long-term rewards. More likely their just haters.
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Almost every year for the past 20+ years I have helped to raise funds for a free clinic in our area. The clinic was established in the 1980's to assist the working poor who couldn't afford the costs of healthcare. Since that time the clinic has opened their services to everyone including those unemployed. The year the ACA went into effect the Director of the clinic told me she wasn't certain whether they would remain opened. Fast forward to 2018 the clinic is alive and well and treating as many patients as before. One of the big problems the people have now is they can't afford the prescription drugs for their illnesses. The strategy of allowing the pharmaceutical industry to charge whatever they want was started by George W. Bush and continued on with Obama when he initiated ACA. Systemically healthcare in the USA is broken because it is only affordable to the chosen few. As long as our executive and legislative branches of government are bought and paid for lock, stock and barrel by the lobbyists, the system will remain broken and unavailable to all. Recently I got a prescription that was a derivative from vitamin D to treat psoriasis and was told by the pharmacist that the cost to me would be $700 for a month's supply. I then told my doctor to tell the pharmaceutical rep to take their vitamin D derivative and put it where the sun doesn't shine.
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At 66 years of age, it constantly amazes me that there is a large segment of the population and just about every elected Republican in any office , from the lowest local one to the WH, wants to deny people access to health care ( education is next folks, but thats for another editorial)
I cant quite get my head around why it is, but it is. I would wager that a large number of these people ( including elected officials ) have availed themselves or a close relative has, to some form of government assistance - be it medicare, medicate, social security, student loans ( back in the day) mortgages, safe cars etc . And yet they have a dream of a truly dystopian world.
Whenever I confront one of them, I ask " OK, lets say I'm a bleeding heart liberal. Tell me what you imagine the country will look like if you get all your wishes? ( of denial to others) "
these miserable people have always been with us , unfortunately it seems for some bizarre reason, they have actually grown in size and power.
Sad
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Note to NYT Editorial Board, you'd have more credibility if you'd take the strongest arguments of the other side head on, rather than not mentioning them at all. For example, no where do you mention that volunteering for community organizations would count as work. What's wrong with everyone contributing to society in some manner rather than just taking? Even someone with arthritis or whatnot can find a low impact volunteer role doing something for someone else in this world, can't they? Also, why is it that prisoners have better access to health care than relatively low wage workers in America. We have too many disincentives to work. Recent research shows there is virtually no benefit to working at relatively low pay to opting for welfare.
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Is medical/health care a human right? Most emphatically yes. Except for the USA every industrialized nation offers some variety of care...even the prosperous countries of the Far East care for their citizens. The conundrum is why Americans or at least those on the right side of the political spectrum are so opposed? As many commenters have remarked on previous occasions why are the so called RIGHT TO LIFERS only concerned about the non gestated fetus. Once you are born you can be executed even if likely innocent (recent case of gay man) or die prematurely because you have no access to primary care or prescriptions. An egregious example I have read often are diabetics. As a country allegedly based on rights why do those rights at least not extend to basic medical care for all? Does not the Right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness by definition include health? From a perplexed Canadian...medicare arrived when I was in my teens. Prior to that we rarely went to the doctor.
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I'd be really curious about how many/what percentage of these poor people who rely on Medicaid voted for Trump.
4
Is this how America is going to be?"
Why, yes. It's what republicans have been striving for for the past 60 years.
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This illustrates the Conservatism-Christianity paradox. A reading of the Gospels makes it perfectly clear: "what you have done to the least of My brethren, you have done to Me." The poor have a right to health care, period. Conservatives, who consider themselves to hava a monopoly on Christian values, do not see the contradiction in their position. The dark truth is that Conservatism is in some instances not only un-Christian, it is anti-Christian.
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