JohnHenry.US

Category: Health

  • Health Care A Right?

    Is health care a right, a privilege, or a commodity? This began as a quite different post back in 2009. In 2023, I’ve reworked it to generalize elements that were personalized. It’s a little startling how little has changed about the steadfast position of the right that human beings somehow have a right to live but not a right to the things that keep them alive.

    The refrain is now almost cliché: “health care is a right, not a privilege.”

    Inevitably this observation draws out right-wing trolls, usually calling themselves “libertarians,” to insist that the idea that health care is a right somehow means that we’re all entitled to the services of medical professionals without those medical professionals being compensated, which is just nonsense and has nothing to do with the argument, but makes for a great little chest-thumping FREEDOM! scream for those whose idea of “freedom” begins and ends with their freedom to obstruct the freedom of everyone they don’t like.

    Typically, those arguments look a bit like this (and to be clear: these are all statements made in the course of the original conversation from which the 2009 version of this article was taken…and repeated constantly before and since.

    Rights are things that one has access to without another person giving up their own rights to Life, Liberty, or Property. Unless you are a doctor or surgeon and can diagnose and/or fix yourself, then you do not have a right to health care.

    Should the federal government provide your food for you? Should we all get free college through the government? Should HUD provide homes fr every person who decides they want to own one? And if you believe any of those things to be true, where does it end?

    I’m not making any argument for or against any sort of health care reform; I’m simply stating a fact: health care is not a right, it’s a commodity.

    Nobody seems to be interested in socializing health care on a local level, just the Federal.

    The idea of a free society in and of itself prohibits the concept of things such as “a right to health care”.

    The argument that a right to health care entails by necessity the violation of the rights of others to make a living is at best specious and at worst servile and self-destructive. This has always been one of the manipulative, dishonest, and underhanded tactics employed by the “libertarians” and right wingers: as soon as you start talking about people not having to pay out of pocket for health care, they start talking about health care providers being expected to work for free, which is simply not the argument being made.

    The entire framing also overlooks the basic fact that the government is of, by, and for us. Yes, it is precisely the government’s job to ensure we all have food, shelter, clothing, health care, and all the other things necessary to protect and empower those rights we love to talk so much about. That is the purpose of a democratic government (including the form of democratic government we call a constitutional republic).

    Then they’ll discuss all these other “rights,” like the “right to obtain and choose my own food,” but entirely ignore the reality that this isn’t a right; if it was, food would be free. I have the right to choose which food I’ll exercise the privilege of my material wealth to acquire, and that’s all.

    Even if I did have a “right to obtain food,” what good does that do if I don’t have any teeth to eat it with because I can’t afford dental care, or I can’t digest it because I can’t get treatment for the ulcers that are slowly metastasizing in my gut because I can’t afford to have them treated?

    In the world described by these folks, people fall into three categories: the plutocracy, the avaricious marks who support the actions of the plutocracy because they think they too will someday be greedy and selfish enough to become a plutocrat if only they wear their brown lipstick thick enough (this group is nearly always the one making these arguments), and the poor, who don’t deserve to be healthy because if they wanted to be healthy they shouldn’t have chosen to be poor.

    Self-governance and deregulation are not the solution to our current problems, in health care and in so many other areas of life in the twenty-first century: they are the cause.

    This particular brand of “libertarianism” is marked mostly by freedom of industry from regulation and a callous, selfish, and frankly heartless disregard for the well-being of other people masquerading as a stoic and perverse sort of social Darwinism, i.e. “only the strong survive, so long as I am allowed to define what constitutes strength in terms that are most advantageous to me in my current situation.” 

    The reality is that universal health care is not “taking from” the medical industry, but rather spreading the burden of cost among all of us collectively, consistently, across time, rather than the current reactive system that relies on treatment at the greatest expense to individuals in response to acute health issues.  Rather than trying to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars at once in response to a disease or injury, universal health care allows us all to pay a little bit at a time perpetually into a system that ensures we all get health care when we need it. This also neutralizes the constant demand of capitalism that everything be constantly more expensive in order to ensure profit margins.

    (Sidebar:  don’t believe the hype regarding long waits, death panels, etc.; while it’s true that various socialized models have various flaws, and that one of those flaws is that sometimes care is delayed, the idea that everyone will suddenly be on years-long waiting lists for acute life-saving treatment is a myth; a scare tactic, a boogeyman waved in the face of the frightened, credulous, and uniformed, in much the same way that “socialism” and “Islam” and “the terrorists win” have been. The only truth to the assertion is that truth which is deliberately created post hoc by those working to dismantle socialized health care systems, putting up roadblocks, preventing access to education to ensure there are sufficient professional to staff such a system, and then blaming the system they’ve broken because it’s not perfect.)

    Our constitution guarantees the “right” to  life and liberty.

    Can you have either of these, if you don’t have your health?

    If the answer to the above question is “no,” then health care must, by derivation of the enumerated rights, also be a right itself. 

    If one has the right to liberty, then one has the right to everything that enables that liberty.  While it is true that these derived rights may sometimes clash irreconcilably with reality – no matter what rights I have, if I’m born without eyeballs or optic nerves the current state of medical technology can’t make me see, even though from a legal standpoint I have the right to see – this does not invalidate the derived rights as rights per se; it only demonstrates that our rights are limited in fact by the caprice of fate.  I have the right to be an auto mechanic; I don’t have the skills, nor the inclination.  My eyeball-less self has the right to see; I just don’t have the tools to see, and in the extreme case I gave, there exists no substitute tool that could be made available to me by society.  Even so, we as a society have agreed to provide our best available substitutes, from alternate languages to guide dogs to audible signals at crosswalks.

    QED:  Health care is a right; we as a society have consistently agreed in many situations to provide health care or a working alternative in any number of situations.  Ergo health care is not only a right, it is a right that is almost universally acknowledged when framed in a friendly context like helping the blind people by putting in audible crossing signals, rather than a less “sexy” context like helping the poor keep their teeth and bodies, and thus their minds, in the best working order that is attainable by the consensual application of medical technology, and in doing so ensuring that they have the ability and inclination – even if gently coerced by a sense of debt to society – to be productive citizens.

    The bottom line is this:  regardless of whether you define it as a right, a privilege, or a ‘commodity,’ universal health care – including birth control and comprehensive sex education free of factual distortion by religious institutions pushing agendas of abstinence and strict heterosexuality, among many other health care needs – is a critical necessity to the survival of our species.

    The reality remains that we are all in this together, and if we don’t get together and work to keep the people we have alive while working to control population growth and the abuse of finite resources through comprehensive reproductive health education and care, this argument will be moot…because sooner rather than later, there won’t be anyone to argue about it anyway.

  • What Real Media Bias Looks Like (2010)

    (Curated post originally published Apr 8 2010)

    The subtle ways in which some media outlets will deliberately attempt to manipulate public opinion rather than just reporting the facts never ceases to amaze me.  This article about the health care bill provides an excellent example of what real media bias looks like – the subtle manipulation of public opinion though the use of loaded words and phrases to play on existing fears or create new ones, which in turn feeds conflict and drives interest in the news, which creates profits for the news companies.  A given organization or writer may also unwittingly wear their bias on their sleeve.

    Such as this article from McClatchy today:  Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public

    In this case, a series of reasonably neutral facts are embedded in a story full of negative anecdotes, some of which make deliberate pretense to fact for the sake of adding negative tone.  To wit:

    “They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com

    “Obama care” is a buzzphrase for all of the negative hype associated with the health care reform bill, used exclusively by conservative commentators and agitators.  I’ve yet to see a credible news source, or a credible commenter on either side of the issue refer to the bill as “Obama care” (or “Obamacare”).  Further, this is the third paragraph in the article – so one of the first evoked emotions is resentment by the conservative “base” against those evil greedy welfare leeches who want a free ride from ol’ Karl Adolph Obama. [ed. note 2023: this was long before Obama & the left began embracing the label]

    So if you already lean conservative on the issue, by the end of paragraph three you’re already pissed.

    It continues on with a claim that call centers have been “inundated” with requests from people who think that they have OMGRITENAOFREEDRUGS.  This strikes me as a highly questionably assessment; I participate widely in conversation on this subject with a very diverse group of people and viewpoints, and I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone who thought that the recent health care bill created immediate free health care for everyone…although in an ideal world that’s what it would have effectively done via single-payer.

    (Of course if we’re all healthy, then we can think about things other than needing medical care.  Things like how to properly detect bias in ostensibly objective news articles, for instance.  I can’t imagine anyone who would want to prevent THAT…)

    Watch the REAL media bias:

    • Consumers are cast as “frustrated” and “confused,” the article says, leveraging the power of suggestion to create confusion where there is none (the HCRB is actually pretty strarightforward, considering the scope and source of the thing) and further inflame negative opinion. 
    • A “new wave of inquiries” is coming; laid-off workers on COBRA are going to lose funding (cue a bunch of people on unemployment complaining about LOSING their socially subsidized health insurance for the unemployed while simultaneously railing against socialist health care policies).
    • A breast cancer survivor (cue sympathy!) is “confused” (oh that poor dear, how could that rotten Obama and his socialist minions have done this!) as to whether she should “try to access private coverage again some day” (Of course she should, if that’s the best option available, and that’s so self-evident as a result of both media coverage and the broad availability of both bill and summaries that I’m forced to wonder if “Ann Wooten” even exists.  Prior to te HCRB, of course, private coverage was the ONLY option other than abject poverty, and it wasn’t an available option at all and never would be to “Ann Wooten” due to her pre-existing condition.)
    • The state employee whines about how long the reform will take; a Hollywood Librul AND Furrner shows up to gloat down his nose at the rabble because he has good insurance through his labor union; small business owners are cast as confused and lost and at risk of cost increases or fines, with vague suggestions of IRS entanglements and labor cuts to “contain costs” – and of course “containing costs” implies that there are new costs to be “contained,” costs that will of course be well in excess of current costs.  The problem is there’s no data to support that implication.
      • One of my favorite passages: 
        Dimarob said many small businesses wouldn’t be able to participate. First they must do research to see whether they qualify. “It requires them to understand the intricacies,” she said.

        What I love about this is that it’s completely meaningless, but it SOUNDS scary.  “Many?”  What is “many?”  Is that a majority percentage?  Or is it “five,” which is indeed many but sure isn’t much among the millions of small businesses in this country?  The great thing is, I can’t find a provision anywhere that would prevent ANY small business from participating – indeed, one of the biggest complaints about this bill is that PARTICIPATION IS MANDATORY.  So how the hell are small businesses going to “not be able to participate?”  Uh-oh…look out, Joe, here come the INTRICACIES for you to have to sort through!  OMG WHY DOES GOVERNMENT MAKE RUNNING A BUSINESS SO HARRRRRRD?

    All of the above aspects of the article add to an overall negative tone – this health care bill is clearly confusing, expensive, and puts at risk the ability of small business (HI JOE THE PLUMBER!) to hire employees and pay their bills.  It makes cancer patients exhaust themselves trying to run the maze of regulation; it leaves parents unable to cover their adult children all the way until SEPTEMBER!!!  It forces small business owners to deal with more paperwork and “intricacies!”  It’s so EVULLLL!

    But it’s not just about accentuating the negative – you also have to negate the positive.  Our intrepid reporter accomplishes this with aplomb, leaving no positive aspect of this legislation untouched by her blighted point of view:

    • Rather than parents grateful for the ability to cover their kids an extra eight years, they’re parents who “have heard” that they can do this, “however” they have to wait until September.
    • Every single positive statement about the new law or the administration is delivered with a qualifier.  Every.  Single.  One. 
      “The administration is launching a public education campaign, BUT…”
      ”Parents can cover currently ineligible children, HOWEVER…”
      “Those with good coverage aren’t worried, BUT…” 
      “He explained many highlights…[h]owever..”
    • The software engineer who defends the bill’s clarity – the only person quoted who had anything positive to say about it – still has his caveats about detail. 
    • Obama has been “touting” a tax credit for small business…note how nasty that sounds, as opposed to the actual objective fact:  Obama has discussed small business tax credits along with the rest of the bill, because it’s now the law and people need to understand it and as President part of his job is to try to help people understand it because he’s the number one talking head in the country.  But rather than that, let’s choose words and phrases that a) make this sound like it’s still one mans quixotic crusade rather than a matter of accomplished federal law and b) then make the president sound like a snake-oil salesman “touting” the latest nostrum.
    • And of course, the president has been traveling to “talk to ordinary Americans.”  Because of course he couldn’t be “explaining” or “meeting” with people – he’s got to be “talking to” them, like a professor or a judge…and let’s not forget that the President is anything but an “ordinary American,” shall we?

    And then the same people who read this article as though it’s an example of objective, fact-based reporting sit and sneer at how dumb the people quoted in the article are for not realizing that their communist dreams of a free ride at the expense of us good, christian, white people who pay taxes are in vain.

    This is what our political discourse has come to, and this is why.  If we don’t start using our heads for something other than a place to put our iPod ear buds, we will continue getting the government, and the country, that we’ve earned.

  • America’s Drug Problem Part 1 (2011)

    This video and post were originally published in 2011. Please note that the domain names mentioned, lowgenius.net and 40yearoldfreshman.com, are no longer active. Special thanks to my nephew James for the camera work!

    Hi, everyone.  JH here, taking on a big issue that has had a major impact on my life all my life:  America’s Drug Problem.

    The videos speak largely for themselves, but I wanted to clear up a few things pre-emptively.

    • I am not endorsing, condoning, or approving of the use of drugs, legal or illegal.  I am only imparting information that I think is important for people who choose this behavior to be aware of.  One of the key side effects of our entirely broken approach to drugs education is the dangerous equivalence of drugs which are physically addictive, and drugs which are not physically addictive, and I think this false equivalence is a root cause of much of the “hard” drug abuse in western culture today.
    • I blew a line and described a neuroreceptor as a “brain cell.”  A neuroreceptor is part of a brain cell, and by leaving those two words – “part of” – out, there’s a risk of confusion.  I corrected this in the transcript, but I just don’t have the resources or patience to go re-shoot an entire three-part video just for the sake of two words.
    • Yes, I’m aware that the wind noise is irritating.  I’ve done my best to eliminate it in post-production, but there’s only so much you can do.  You can view a transcript on-screen using the close-captioning button, or simply read along below.
    • This is the first of three videos dealing with this subject, and I strongly recommend you watch them all.  Our problems understanding the risks and differences between the drugs we’re on is only one small part of a very large problem.

    Transcript:

    Hey there folks, John Henry, LowGenius.Net, 40yearoldfreshman.com.

    This country has a drug problem.  We actually have three drug problems, and I want to discuss them, because there’s a lot of bullshit that goes around, everybody talks all kinds of mad shit, this and that, everybody’s got their agenda, everybody’s got something to  say about it and everybody thinks this and thinks that and it’s all this conflicting information.

    So, the first problem that we have, with drugs in America is that there are people that are on drugs in America…now, it’s not something that I’m proud of, or even that I really like to discuss, but it needs to be said:  I spent about thirteen years of my life wrapped up in hard drugs I know what it’s about, I know what the lifestyle’s about, I know how it works.

    There’s something that a lot of people don’t understand about drugs and drugs addiction, and that’s…that there are two different types of addiction.  There’s a physical or physiological addiction that has a physical component, there’s also psychological addiction.

    Now you can be psychologically addicted to anything that you use or abuse in an unhealthy manner, whether it’s, you know, sex or reading books or playing video games or World of Warcraft or Facebook or whatever, you can be addicted in that sense to anything.

    Physiological, physical, addiction is a little bit different.  With physical addiction there are certain drugs that actually change the shape of the neuroreceptors in your brain.  For those of you who don’t know what a neuroreceptor is, it’s (part of a) brain cell, the neuroreceptor is basically a mouth on that brain cell that eats nutrients. And it’s shaped in a certain way so the nutrients fit into it and it seeks those out, and that’s what causes hunger and on and on.

    So:  drugs that are physically addictive change your body to believe that that drug is a necessary substance for life, like food and water.  That is why physical addiction can be so very compelling, because on a primal level the addict believes and behave just as they would if they were starving, okay? That’s physical addiction, that’s the nasty shit, that’s the bad shit.  That’s what I went through for 13 years when I was doing hard drugs.

    Physically addicting drugs are your methamphetamines; cocaine-based substances; opiates – heroin, morphine, oxycontin. A lot of prescription drugs, especially painkillers, mood elevators, and anti-depressants have a physically addictive component – not all of them, and I don’t have a comprehensive list of which ones are which, but keep your eyes open.

    Those are physically addictive things, they WILL hook you.  Crack cocaine.

    Alcohol is physically addictive.  There was a study done in the early ’80s where an anthropologist looked at the brains of dead skid row bums, dead alcoholics, and the brains of alcoholics had changed in precisely the same ways and were even generating some of the same substances as the brains of people who had died of heroin overdoses after long-term addictions. So what I’m trying to tell you is that these things are very much the same, and people don’t realize it.  Nicotine, cigarettes, is another one – physically addictive.  It hooks your body, it doesn’t just hook your mind.  Now…marijuana?  Not physically addictive. Magic mushrooms, not physically addictive.  LSD?  Not physically addictive, as far as anyone’s ever proven or shown.

    Speaking from my own experience, those drugs are not physically addictive.  I’ve done them all.  I’ve also done drugs that were physically addictive, and I know what addiction feels like.  It’s a different thing.  If somebody who is a heavy pot smoker runs out of pot, doesn’t have any way to get any more…they might be bitchy for a couple of days, you know?  But they get over it, life goes on, blah blah blah whatever.  Somebody addicted to cocaine runs out, and they break into your house and steal your television set.  That’s the difference between psychological and physical addictions.  That’s not to say that psychological addiction cant be as profound as physical addiction, but it’s much more rare.

    So.  I’m certainly not going to recommend that anybody go do anything illegal or abuse any kind of drugs, but even if you’re going to take drugs therapeutically and legally for pain or whatever, be aware.  Be aware of the risk of physical addiction.  Ask your doctor, is this drug physically, physiologically addictive.  Do the best you can to avoid the ones that are.

    That’s our first problem, is the fact that people are using drugs and they don’t fully understand what the risks are of each individual drug and what the differences are between each individual drug.  The next video, we’re going to talk the second problem – which is the way we educate ourselves, each other, and our children about drugs.

    Thanks for watching.  I’m John Henry, Lowgenius.Net.  Remember to share, like, comment, drop by my blog @ lowgenius.net and 40yearoldfreshman.com, spread it around, I need all the traffic I can get, thanks very much.