Philip Greenspun:

Health insurance is a basic human right ... which is why Congress proposes to leave 18 million people still uninsured in the year 2019 (source). I�m getting more and more confused by our politicians. A lot of them have offered beautiful speeches about how it is both a tragedy and a violation of basic human rights for a person to live in the U.S. without health insurance. At present, millions of Americans are not customers of health insurance companies. After the proposed $1 trillion health care reform has had six years to work, we�ll be left with� millions of Americans who have no insurance. If this is indeed a moral issue, how can it be moral to leave millions in the same supposedly inhuman situation that they�re in right now?

I am trying to remember who said this first -- maybe it was Philip Howard? -- but you get in arguments with people about costs and benefits and what should be paid for by whom, and then someone stands up and says "but this is a right." And argument stops, because if something is a right you can't demand that it be limited by feasibility or cost-benefit studies. It just ends debate.

Labels: economics, health, health care