House passes health care reform

The House just passed the health reform bill with a vote of 219-212. 

Click here to find out how your Representative voted.

For the first time in history, a comprehensive health care bill has passed both Houses of Congress. The bill will give health care to 32 million Americans and save over 30,000 lives per year. And it will regulate the insurance companies so they can no longer deny care for pre-existing conditions, charge you more if you're sick, put limits on your benefits, or increase rates with impunity.

Also for the first time, Members of Congress will have the choice of the same health care plans as millions of Americans.

Is Health Care a right?

There are ethical/moral reasons for suggesting

HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT

From a bioethicist's point of view health care is a right because

The community argument:

When one lives in a community(your state, your country) members of that community must believe that every member of that community is deserving of health care. It is the ethical/moral thing to do. The ethical argument then suggests that universal health care is the way to go to reform health care. If not universal health care, then there MUST be government participation (not takeover) to provide care to those people who can't afford private care.

Therefore the matter must be resolved through an ethical framework.

Ethics refers to determining right and wrong in how humans relate to one another. Ethical decision making for health care reform then would require human beings to act in consideration of our relationships to each other not our own individual interests.

Examination of some of the common ethical decision making theories can provide a foundation for a different perspective than one that is solely concerned with individual rights and freedoms.

And the ethical/moral solution does not mean we have to give up all our individual rights and freedoms. It does not mean we give up our capitalist society and turn into a socialist nation.

One look at the Medicare provision of health care in this country (U.S) tells us that we chose health care built on that ethical/moral framework way back in the 1960s and we didn't turn into a socialist state.

Non-maleficence (doing no evil), human dignity and the sanctity of life are three values upon which questions of ethics/morals are based.

airs Sunday August 30 9o'clock