Whole Foods and Half Wits on Health Care

The boycott efforts against Glenn Beck’s advertisers have quickly been very effective; he’s losing advertisers by the day. I’d hate for Whole Foods to be off-limits, but those are offensive comments and supremely unwelcome at this moment, and the former employee had some powerful words. Would love to know what other WF employees have to say . . . such as about him being an “anti-union jerkface.” Yuck.

There are those–like Edie Falco, who survived cancer–who have good health insurance and aren’t worrying about themselves, but they care greatly about friends and strangers who don’t have or can’t get health insurance, or anything worth anything, so they’re out speaking up about it, fighting hard for meaningful reform. And others who just find sense in the idea of a rising tide lifting all boats. Then there are the people who are interested in their own situations and even say they could care less about the 47 million-plus uninsured. They go to town halls and scream lately. Why, really? Why take this last sweet month of summer, when people in northern climates only get a few months anyway, and use the time to stir up angry battles and so much agitation and hurt? When we could be . . . being more generous and nice, more concerned about each other, many whom we’ll never know, and mutually respectful just because.

Great article, keep up the good writing.

Colossal Douche – I like the way that sounds!

I generally admire a man who says what he feels despite the business implications. It’s hard, however, to admire a man like this, though.

There is a formal boycott site, though, for those who are interested:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/13-0

In 2006, the Census Bureau reported that there were 46.6 million people without health insurance. About 9.5 million were not United States citizens. Another 17 million lived in households with incomes exceeding $50,000 a year and could, presumably, purchase their own health care coverage. Eighteen million of the 46.6 million uninsured were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, most of whom were in good health and not necessarily in need of health-care coverage or chose not to purchase it. 9.4 million temporarily lose their health insurance while between jobs and 50% of these persons regained their health coverage within four months. 3.5 million uninsured are eligible for existing programs but don’t bother to apply. The 47 million “uninsured” figure is widely inaccurate.

What we really need is a system to provide health care for about 10 million persons who fall through the gaps without destroying the benefits of nearly 300 million who are currently insured. Many argue, and Obama has stated, that those who are currently covered can continue with their coverage. However, the proposed penalties imposed on employers for not providing coverage are less than the amount that employers currently spend on providing health care for their employees. Many union contracts currently have clauses that would eliminate health care coverage if a government sponsored option becomes available. As Obama has stated in the past, it would take 15 – 20 years to enact his ideal of a single payer universal care health system.

With no competition to rein in costs, availability of treatment options will be severely reduced for most, in order to provide care for increasing numbers of eligible participants. With the Baby Boomer generation now starting to retire and enter the age bracket needing the most care, Medicare will shortly be bankrupt. The failures of that government sponsored Ponzi scheme are well publicized. I think the real half-wits are those who continue to rely on the benevolence of government for life and death concerns.

“Healthcare is not a right, it’s a good/service. Like any good/service you want, you can save up for it to pay for it. Insurence is for emergencies. Does your car insurence pay for most mechanic visits? No, you do. Health insurence is meant to be the same way.”

exactly why it sucks.

First, I fail to see why anyone earning over 30k shouldn’t have a voice in the debate.

Second, just because it’s provided doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be forced to accept whatever a gov’t coordinated plan offers. Beyond what’s provided, it could be thought of as a good or service you save for, purchase.

Third, Really, right now anyone in a health plan is having services provided to them on some level (at the cost of a monthly deductible and shared copayments). Same for employer backed health plans. Unless you’re not enrolled and just willy-nilly purchasing an office visit here, nose job there, and an MRI per year….you are part of some level of purchasing collective and are having services provided to you.

oh wow, ok. i’ll have to let my insurer know. they seem to think i have to accept whatever they offer and do without what they don’t offer. and i pay them for that service.

seriously, eos, do you listen to the stories of people without access to health care in this country? or the people who paid every month for insurance, then got dropped when they needed a procedure? these stories are everwhere! it’s a crying shame you propagandize instead of giving a fuck.

Dem Now had a nurse on yesterday who was at the town hall meeting with Specter, where the same people screaming about how the govt can’t do anything were also screaming that they were about to lose their Medicare.

Here’s the guy:

STANLEY ZUBER: I had some questions prepared that I wanted to ask the senator, but after listening to the first twenty questions that were asked, I just couldn’t let go some of the topics that were brought up and the hostility of the crowd, screaming about what we can’t do right, etc.

So what I wanted to—what I did was I shared a story, stories that we hear every day, you know, in healthcare from our patients, about a patient that I happened to take care of a while back who was a forty-seven-year-old contractor who ended up—his wife—they had insurance because of his wife’s insurance. She lost her job. He ended up having a heart attack without insurance, showed up to our place, had a cardiac cath, found out that he needed quadruple bypass, and I happened to be with him pre-surgery for a couple days.

The guy didn’t sleep for a couple days. He was distraught, he was sick, thinking that he was going to lose his house, you know, with all the bills for the cost, lose his business, and his kids might have to bear the burden of all of this cost. He actually said to me he might be better off dead, and they would get the insurance instead of having these bills.

And as I was sharing this with the senator and the crowd to put like the human face on it, because our concern is for the millions of underinsured and uninsured people, they just were yelling at me, you know, “Shut up!” all of this. One individual, one man, he led the charge for everybody who asked a question that wasn’t against healthcare, he would not shut up.

… the conversations prior to getting in were fascinating to me with the disconnect, like there’s something with the synapses, I think, that are wrong, because many of these people are saying, “Who cares about people who don’t have healthcare?”

I had conversations with people in our community about laid-off workers right up here in Columbia, Montour County. I said, “They did nothing wrong. They work for a company for twenty-one years. They’ve just been laid off. They have no health insurance. They’re scared to death about losing their home. A burst appendix could help them lose their home.” And some of these people say, “Who cares?” And I said to the one gentleman, who was seventy-two years old, I said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “I’m here because I don’t want them to take my Medicare.” I said, “Sir, if I had the same thought process as you, I would say, the minute you turn sixty-five, we would say, ‘You’re on your own. Who cares?’
\endquote

something with the synapses indeed.

EOS, your reactionary jerk-facery never ceases to amaze me.

Get off your thinly-veiled racist bullshit about the uninsured. This issue has so much more to do with the insured than the uninsured that it’s absurd to even mention the latter. Insurance isn’t a free market now. Not even close. You defending it just makes you look like that much more a tool. You are the captains of industry’s best friend. Another ignorant American.

Denial of service is the cornerstone of any subscription-based industry. And who do you think they’re going to deny first: You or the big medical suppliers and drug companies? Turn off the preening actors at Faux News and learn something.

And you, of all people, should be ashamed of yourself. Jesus healed the sick. He didn’t tell them to fuck off and buy their own insurance. You are so going to hell.

As someone who is self-employed and had a hell of a time for many years finding any decent insurance that was even reasonably affordable or would cover a thing except extreme emergencies, I know our system is badly broken. And now with better health insurance I regularly encounter problems of exorbitant costs being billed to insurance unfairly, just because providers can get away with it. And insurance is shirking more and more every day–have you noticed how much insurers are refusing to pay even over the past few months, when worry that reform might happen is sending them into a mad rush to get it while they can? Why would anyone support this system, which mainly rewards corporate interests at most of our expense?

It’s really willful disregard to state that 300 million Americans are currently insured and call it a day–as if what’s going on is decent, good, or even adequate. Even just in terms of basic economics, the status quo is wanting badly:

Down the drain: $1.2 trillion.

That’s half of the $2.2 trillion the United States spends on health care each year, according to the most recent data from accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute.

–http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/10/news/economy/healthcare_money_wasters/index.htm

And what about the truly bright opportunity to shift the emphasis in health care to well-being and preventing disability and illness, rewarding doctors for helping to keep us well instead of using all sorts of pricey tests and equipment that aren’t necessarily justified or appropriate, plus too readily doling out bad medicine, and being willing to charge highly inflated fees. It would be so good to see doctors respecting and engaging with their patients, giving proper time and consideration, instead of rushing around like frustrated worker bees because they’ve been forced to abandon the proper focus of their profession in order to get paid.

i think i’ll watch the vewy scawy “obama wants everyone to have health care!” video after you watch the wendell potter one.

If we want healthcare that is affordable and accessible, we must control costs as they do in many European countries-from the top down. What budgets hospitals have, where they spend their money, even salaries, are set by the government for all public hospitals. How can we force people to buy insurance when there are no controls set for expenditures? Healthcare is more of a necessity than a luxury, unlike car insurance which is there to cover accidents-the drivers and the other vehicles involved. Yes, bodies have wear and tear and we can do more to prevent/improve just as cars which need regular maintenance. For any car work, we dole out the money needed as we can afford it. The same with our healthcare out of pocket costs. Except, while we can possibly get other transportation if a car breaks down or go a bit longer before fixing a car, we cannot always have such luxury of time with our bodies. We get sick, need specialists, need tests, all necessary to repair the broken body. It’s the only physical transportation we have. We could stay home and stay sick and die as they used to when the doctor would make house calls and you could pay him with a chicken from the back yard. But now you’d need $150 worth of chickens to see him in an office for your 10 minutes of fame. And that’s about 30 chickens at $5.00 per hen. And Ypsi only allows 4.

And you, of all people, should be ashamed of yourself. Jesus healed the sick. He didn’t tell them to fuck off and buy their own insurance. You are so going to hell.

He healed them at his own expense, voluntarily, as a private citizen… not at the expense of exploited Chinese labor, which is currently funding our Government’s expenses.

O.K., let’s get one thing straight: Those who continue to insist that healthcare is a “private good” and, therefore oppose substantial healthcare reform, are basically saying that only those fortunate enough to have a good job that provides insurance, or who can afford to buy coverage or pay for care directly are “worthy” of receiving medical care. By extension, they believe the “poor” should just resign themselves to suffering with untreated chronic conditions, or living one accident or illness away from bankruptcy and/or financial ruin — or even death.

No I’m not. Doctor’s less encumbered by regulation in the past often treated poor people for cheap or for free, because they were free to.

Jim –

Yes, Medicare is more of a Ponzi scheme than other insurance programs. The government has taken nearly 25% of my earnings over my entire lifetime to fund Social Security and Medicare. I’ve paid in advance, involuntarily, for programs that won’t be there when I’m retired.

Glen –
The poor are covered through Medicare. What is needed is a safety net of health care coverage for the Middle Class when they are between jobs. What we need are laws that ensure health coverage continues when a person becomes so sick that they can no longer work. What we need is not to destroy the whole system to accomplish this.

I love it how all the humanitarians don’t give a rat’s ass that Obama’s stimulus (and, if it passes, healthcare) will be funded by exploited Chinese labor.

Now everytime I see the shiny new Freighthouse, I’ll think of those five dead Chinese girls that made it all possible. We truly live in a Utopian age of wonders. Yes they can slave away to increase our already relatively astronomical standard of living! Yes they can!

It is worth thinking of abused members of the Chinese workforce and our culpability in their plight, such as our over-the-top support as consumers these couple of decades, blech. At Walmart you can stock an entire kitchen (plates, glasses, bowls, tableware, pots and pans, and toaster) for less than $100 with items from China (possibly poisonous, definitely cheap, definitely not worth it in every respect). It should set off alarms when a person can outfit a kitchen with so much merchandise and yet pay $100. And a year ago (maybe still?) all the light bulbs at Lowe’s, even those sold by U.S. companies, were made in China, and they were crap (sometimes lasted a week, excellent deal). Our beloved hardware stores are nearly a thing of the past. So we can mourn our losses–of hardware stores, of American-made goods, of a sense of what things are worth, of being satisfied with less so needing more–as we mourn the pain we’ve brought to people all over the world, including workers in China, children, political prisoners. Including the hundred thousand-plus Iraqis whose deaths we are responsible for. It isn’t very pretty being an American, but we can keep striving to be better. And it’s definitely worth cleaning our big house of a country, really scrubbing it, curbing our payments to ever-greedier health insurance companies and unethical medical care providers. Pay the good ones, have things heading in a better direction “for all.”

But to bring the discussion here down to our debt to China because no other anti-reform argument works very well probably isn’t helpful, might just be a way to muck up the discussion. Things are complicated, and at this moment in history our country still has a deep sickness that a health care reform bill could not possibly fix–but it could be a start.

Health care is not today a “right” but many people think it should be a right. No “right” that exists today has always been a “right,” and by right I mean a claim that is enforceable by law or by society’s customary and accepted practices. Rights are created over time by people demanding rights and fighting for them! The British parliament once thought Americans had no right to representation of any direct type in the Government that ruled them — and many Americans came to disagree, and they fought for the right to self-government, and the American Revolution resulted, and it gave birth to the United States. So yes, this businessmen who owns Whole Foods is right: Health care is not a right. Not today anyway. But he foolishly and selfishly talks of rights as if they never change over time. He aligns himself against progress and in favor of the rich over the working people. Most of the rights now protected by the United States constitution were not always recognized as “rights.” They became rights because people fought for them.

If you want health care to be a right in the US — as it is many or most other economically advanced countries in 2009 — then you must fight to make that a right. And the Whole Foods corporation has decided it is fighting against that right. Clearly most of its employees would benefit from health care becoming a right. A boycott seems to be in order, just as Americans 220 years ago boycotted importations from Britain, as a weapon in the fight for self-government. Mackay is a later day Tory, a pawn of the corporate King George III that “the general welfare” of the American People requires to be overthrown. As quickly as possible.

No right exists that people did not fight to establish and fight to protect over time.
Clearly the nation’s well being includes a right to good health care. Why isn’t that right expressly addressed in the Constitution? Well, at the time we wrote it, health care was of questionable value: physicians were sorted by social class, were ineffective or detrimental to preserving health. Doctors were still “bleeding” patients and not until about 1900 were doctors and hospitals more likely to heal than to harm or kill a patient. Scientific medicine is much younger than this country. Older countries have, thru social struggles, made health care a right; the USA has not, in part due to this nonsense that providing high quality health care to all would be detrimental to “American freedom.” Similar nonsense was argued in my day against freeing the slaves, on the grounds that ending slavery would be unaffordable and a threat to the freedom of property.

Human liberty is advanced only by struggles to expand the Rights of Mankind. Does any business which actively campaigns against the expansion of Human Rights deserve our patronage? Two centuries ago, British and American citizens who opposed slavery came to boycott sugar, virtually all of which was grown on slave plantations. Boycott!

“A boycott seems to be in order, just as Americans 220 years ago boycotted importations from Britain, as a weapon in the fight for self-government. ”

Yeah. let’s boycott those rich old insurers, let’s all dump our insurance, and send those bastards a message. We’ll just show up to the ER with our cash in hand when we fall ill. Good idea.
In fact, let’s boycott all those rich hospital owners while we are at it. When we get sick, we’ll just stay home and heal our damn selves.
Who is with me?

If Mr. Madison can describe which other of our inalienable rights are dependant on taking other people’s property (money) by force to pay for them, I sure would appreciate it.

I fund my right to keep and bear arms out of pocket.

I risk other people’s ire when I exercise my freedom of speech, and no one bears that risk but me.

I suppose the closest you could come is my right to a trial by jury, but that’s at the expense of the state that’s tryin’ ta getcha, and is offset by fines if I’m found guilty.

I just don’t see why the state (i.e.– my fellow taxpayers) should be forced to pay for my ailments, which aren’t their fault, if they don’t want to.

I’m not sure that qualifies as a right any more than any other important good or service.

Let’s try to understand John Mackey’s motivation. Not being a mind reader, I will have to rely on speculation.

I assume he is a shrewd businessman and he knows that he risked a backlash among his customer base. But he said what he said, judging that the risk was acceptable. So, even if he thinks the risk is acceptable, why take the risk? What is the potential gain?

Here, I am assuming that he did not write the opinion piece in WSJ out of blind devotion to an ideological cause. That’s possible, but seems inconsistent with the notion that he is acting as a shrewd businessman. Therefore, he expects some business advantage to accrue from his opposition to universal, single-payer health coverage. But what would that be?

Consider the myth about the role of small business in the USA:
US Economic Myths Bite the Dust

If we look at what percentage of our overall labour force is self-employed, or what percentage of manufacturing workers or high-tech workers are employed in small businesses – well, the US ranks at or near the bottom among high-income countries.

The absence of universal, single-payer health coverage is an impediment to small business. There are some large businesses that could be threatened by small upstart firms. Those large businesses can afford to provide healthcare benefits, whereas the upstarts have a hard time doing so. Sure, there are exceptions, but in general, this is true. Sharon Astyk has a post, somewhere, about how this is a factor with small farms. (Farming is a hazardous profession.)

My suspicion is this: Mackey seeks to enhance his position in the marketplace, by perpetuating the challenges facing potential upstart competitors.

Recall that the Big 3 auto companies have expressed support for universal, single-payer health coverage. They have plenty of competition from firms in countries that do provide universal, single-payer health coverage. They do not face a significant risk from small upstarts. Nobody can start building cars in their garage and ramp up to selling hundreds of thousands of cars.

But Whole Foods is vulnerable. Anybody could set up a fruit/vegetable stand, and potentially grow to the point that it bites into WF’s business. The more obstacles, the better, from Mackey’s point of view.

Oliva,
Thank you for pointing out that my comment was in favor of boycotting Whole Foods. You seem learned and literate and humane.

BA,
I am not sure that I entirely understand your question – or what gives rise to it — but here is my attempt to answer it. Two examples: The abolishment of slavery, a generation or two after my death, involved a massive confiscation of private property – the property in human beings. By far the single greatest confiscation of private property in American history – and undeniably one the most significant steps in the struggle for making the rights of American freedom applicable to all Ameircans. This confiscation was of course a requirement in order to establish the right of the former slaves and their children to be free. So, in a real sense, the right of Black people to become free was taken directly out of the property rights of their owners. This is beyond debate. The rights of the freedmen were paid for by taking wealth from their owners. (In a more profound moral sense, their freedom was paid for by the blood of United States soldiers, but this is not the kind of payment I think BA was asking about).

Second example: such things as public education, national aviation, and a national military defense (a standing army) that are provided by the Government, and paid for by tax revenues of any kind obviously represent expenses that the tax payers have to bear, and no individual taxpayer can legally “opt out” of supporting public education or the army or the FAA. Taxpayers may collectively, thru the democratic process (such as it is), elect representatives who will change government policy; but that is not an individual choice; hence these government services and their expenses are not analogous to consumer purchasing decisions. Arguably national defense is not a individual “right”; but it is beyond argument that American society long ago decided that access to a free public education was indeed a “right” for all citizens. Similarly, in the progressive era, the Congress declared that citizens had a right to expect food to be safe from contamination, thus forcing businesses to undertake expenses to protect consumers: This is an example of the rights of some (eaters of food) being paid for by mandates put on others (food providing firms).

And the expense for providing the right to a public education is not assigned or billed, in the USA unlike I think Mexico and India, to the individual student or her family. This is one clear example of a “right” that individual citizens have that they do not pay for individually, on a kind of user basis. This is beyond debate.

And what of the right to be secure in one’s property and to be from violent attack? Individuals may undertake expenses of various types to add to these kinds of security, but wouldn’t you agree, BA, that a responsibility of Government is to protect the lives and property of citizens from violent criminals? Government may do so imperfectly, but don’t you agree that the police should protect the lives and property of citizens without first extracting a fee for services from citizens seeking protection? Equal protection of the law is a “right” — it is not supposed to be a benefit that one can purchase from the police; it is not a commodity to be purchased. It’s not a consumer good, it is a right of citizenship. If it is a “right” that must be purchased…then it is not a right at all but merely a privilege to be secured by those with money. In much of the world, this is how it works, but they call it bribery and make no pretense of equal protection of the law.

Where does health care fall on this scale – a right of citizenship or a consumer good to be purchased at a price set by the market? That’s what the crux of this debate is all about, isn’t it?

And BA, your reference to the right to bear arms confuses me. You may purchase your own firearms, but I think you err in mistaking that purchase with the right itself. Buying the gun is a consumer choice, not the right itself. My 2nd Amendment as currently interpreted applies as much to the citizens who own no guns as to those who frequently buy guns! It is a RIGHT, dear Sir, and rights are not sold in a market. The right for the accused to be tried by a jury of their peers — does the accused “buy” that right by hiring a jury? No: The public protects that right by forming a jury and a court system.

Commodities are bought and sold, not rights (with the exception of the right to buy a given commodity, in such forms as futures contracts, etc.). One of the tragedies of America today is this widespread tendency to confuse what one can buy with what one’s rights. Of course, after one buys something legally, one has a right to that property: but the right to property in the broader, most fundamental sense, is not a commodity. Rights are not commodities.

No human right has existed through out time. No right that is established in one time will last thru out subsequent periods of time without it being defended, at least not if it’s a right that touches on something important. And nothing becomes a human right without struggle. Blacks had no right to freedom for most of American history, and victims of violent crime had no right to expect Government prosecution of the accused until the 19th century, and most nations comparable to the USA today have established a “right” to health care decades ago. What is a right changes over time and across borders. This is of course, in the view of this Old Revolutonary, an argument for demanding more rights, for struggling for more rather than less freedom.

Mr. President,

It would be appreciated if you would spend some time studying the concept of methodological individualism. Your many references to “society chooses” and “congress declares” implies that these groups are individual agents capable of action in their own right, rather than groups of individuals acting of their own accord and in their own interest.

Also, in describing the regulatory state as a public good which delivers practically a “right” to a certain standard of food, you seem to be wholly unfamiliar with regulatory capture theory. From Woodrow Wilson:

“If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it.”

Regards.

Whoops. Ypsiman was not me! But the post was by me.
(Where art thou, Ypsiman?)

Oliva,

Please google methodological individualism. It’s not to say that we’re not connected in mutual cooperation, just that we act as individuals rather than groups, and that it’s not accurate to say that “congress” act, but rather to say that individual reps act.

Mike want longr name,

Thanks for tip–my head swims now in heady economic philosophy and sociology, with appreciation and a nod to the scientists demonstrating lately that we get a thrilling dose of dopamine from working our brains. Nice feeling.

Re. individual reps, or senators as the case be–some of the actual reps hardly reps in spirit–Max Baucus might be exhibit A?

The appropriate phrase here is an old one, “Follow the money”. For instance, I have heard that Whole Foods is planning an expansion of it’s home remedy and vitamin sales departments. If true, this fits nicely with the statements made by Mackey.
Actually, you can frame this whole debate about health care in the US by following the money.

galan, Thanks for your comment “I have heard that Whole Foods is planning an expansion of it’s home remedy and vitamin sales departments” and the “Follow the money” line, short and sweet and right.

Just to remind anybody who thinks they might want to shop WF for home remedies and vitamins: across the street and down a hop, skip, and jump from WF’s here is humble and tiny, but very worthwhile and ample in a way, Castle Remedies, with nice weekly sales. And of course the Ypsi Food Co-op. And plenty of other wholesome options.

“If health care is a right, then everybody gets it, right? Even a guy who is self employed making 100 grand a year with no insurance who falls ill with cancer will have a free hospital stay? If not, it is a priviledge of the impoverished uninsured, not a right.”

Is there something wrong with that? That’s the way public schools work. Everybody pays, everybody gets to go, but if you don’t like the schools, you can always pay money and send your kid to private school.

Besides, even if the guy makes 100 grand a year, don’t assume he has tons of cash lying around. We all know how much self-employment tax is and if he lives in San Francisco or Manhattan and has 10 kids, he may or may not be able to afford decent private insurance.

I had this awesome response in which I was going to work the phrase “your definition of a right is two wrongs,” or maybe, “there’s a diference between natural rights and might-makes-rights,” and then I suddenly stopped caring. Sorry everyone.

Michelangelo’s “Blockhead Slave” was going to make an appearance in a metaphor that’s not too hard to see coming. You get the picture. Unalienable. Blah blah blah.

Joanne –

I think we both meant Medicaid covers the poor. Thanks for correcting my mistake.

I can’t resist when guns are involved. Another racist yokel with a gun at a healthcare rally.

The best quote I’ve heard since this whole Death Panel thing started was today on Reddit… “By denying the poorest Americans affordable Healthcare, the Republicans have become the Death Panel they vehemently admonish.”

EOS,
You should study history. You quote my late very good friend Thomas, but you quote him out of context. The very rights that he spoke of in that beautiful Declaration were not then, in 1776, thought to apply to Negroes, or to women; that such people were then thought not worthy of rights like “liberty” or property or the vote, but later acquired such rights, is proof of my argument: Namely, that rights expand (or contract) over time.

The natural rights position, so influential in my day as a living man, is a beautiful theory, but it does not describe historical change: Indeed, it was a product of historical change, and a weapon for brining it about.

By the way, Thomas quite agrees with me about how the rights stated in his Declaration applies now to people who were excluded then. He’s big enough, in death, to admit to inconsistency and hypocrisy in life; but his flaws as a living man do not repudiate the validity of his broad claims. If you like what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, you ought to favor a single payer health system, for nothing else would do so much to advance Americans’ “pursuit of happiness” so quickly as to eliminate worries about how to pay for, and to get, decent health car.

Mr Locke? I never liked his ideas as much as people of your era assumed I did. Too status quo oriented. I was a revolutionary, you know. By the way, your statement that “If a government were capable of granting rights then it would be equally capable of limiting or restricting those rights. Such is not the case in our constitutional republic.” is demonstrably false, which should be evident to you if you go thru this excercise: Read each amendment to the constitution, noting which ones establish new rights (and which ones repealed previously existing rights).

However, I’ll agree with you on this much EOS: It would be a better world if all rights necessary for human freedom were perfectly well established, unchanging, and universally honored. That’s a nice, utopian dream — or else a goal for revolutionaries to pursue. Imagine a world with no violation of human rights.

James,

Amendments to the constitution codified natural rights as legal rights. They cannot grant rights that don’t already exist. You didn’t include the bill of rights in the original constitution because it was assumed everyone understood these freedoms were inherent. Many withheld their approval of the constitution until some of these self-apparent rights were explicitly included to prevent future misinterpretations for such a time as this. Blacks and women are created with all natural rights as well. That our government didn’t recognize and protect those rights initially does not negate their existence or the moral certitude that eventually corrected this injustice. Where government denies the natural rights of its citizens there is tyranny and it is the responsibility of its citizens to throw off the shackles of oppression. My pursuit of happiness is not enhanced through government confiscation of my earnings to pay for the abortions or euthanasia of other created beings. Taxation for government programs is necessary for services that benefit the collective and are impossible to obtain as an individual, e.g. national defense. When government exceeds its authority and attempts to eliminate health care options that suit the needs of the individual, it must be opposed.

kjc –

Obama’s plan to overturn DOMA and the will of more than 70% of Americans makes him 0 for 5. Some would call it an Obamination.

kjc, to help your waking up:

My pursuit of happiness is not enhanced through government confiscation of my earnings to pay for immoral and/or illegal wars and torture. Taxation for government programs is necessary for services that benefit the collective and are impossible to obtain as an individual, e.g. universal health care.

Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

For all of you who were wondering.

Just to clarify, EOS, I said “universal health care” (which doesn’t mean, despite the simplicity of saying it, “one size fits all”).

We now pay for so-called illegal aliens (truly yucky language) for emergency room care.

EOS,
You mention a philosopher from your time period, Peter Singer, who is I believe employeed at my alma mater, now called Princeton University. You claim he would be heading up a committee to determine who is worthy of care. You have no evidence for that claim; Singer is a philospher with no evident inclination to become a bureaucrat.

Further, isn’t it true that health insurance companies today decide who is worthy of care and who’s not? Lifetime benefit caps are just one way that these companies allocate or ration care.

I am in agreement with the wise comments of kjc and Olivia. Yes, repeal the Defense of Marriage Act! What a bizzare idea it is that marriage needs defense by rationing the right to marry, as if our World can be harmed by having too many loving Unions of consenting adults.

And EOS: your articulation of Natural Rights is I am sure sincere. But you abstract that ideology, Natural Rights, from actual human experience. Could we agree to talk about ideals exclusively, or about actual conditions excluisvely, rather than mixing them up all the time? Natural Rights advocates in my day counted the right to property as a natural right — and I agree. Back then, however, it was agreed that these natural rights included the right to own human property.

That Frenchman Rousseau said “Man is born free and yet everywhere he is enslaved.” This sums up the inadequacy of talking only of the ideal of Natural Rights: What matters most is not what theory by which the status quo is defended or criticized, but what the status quo actually consists of and how it can be improved. You seem blind to the fact that the creators of the idea of Natural Rights advocated political steps to transform social and political relations in order to create institutions that more nearly permit human beings full access to their Natural Rights. If you weren’t blind to this, you’d understand that the demand for universal health care is entirely consistent with the natural rights philosophy; you dogmatically turn that philosophy into a static law rather than the vehicle for transforming the world it was meant to be.

Lastly, EOS, you err deeply and fundamentally in thinking it was “Government” that denied Blacks and women their natural rights in the 18th century. Government did not create sexism or patriarchy. The denial of equality to these groups of oppressed people was far more deeply rooted than was any Government at the time. I am surprised that someone with your deeply seated bias against Government would so carelessly or ignorantly blame it for the fundamental features of the civil society, either now or in the past. If you’re a patriot, you should find out the relevant facts before you go blogging on topics of vital importance.

Dr. Singer will not be the literal committee chair. His terminology, “QALY” or Quality Adjusted Life Year is pervasive in the 1000 page draft of the health care bill. QALY is the term he uses to describe the process of allocation of scarce health care resources. It’s a numerical system that assigns value to individuals depending on their age and condition, the cost of treatment, and the number of years of potential quality life remaining for that individual. Under his moral code, a person with a disability has less value to society and therefore has a lower QALY score and less right to medical treatment. As a person ages and reaches retirement, a time where medical treatments are typically more of a necessity, their QALY score may be too low to be considered deserving of that treatment. Dr. Singer is an extremely radical thinker who has a long history of controversy. He believes that abortion should be an option for mothers up to 6 months after the birth of their baby.

In a manner similar to how former presidents have parsed words, Obama is insistent that his plan will not “ration” care.

Dear Dude,

I agree with your rebuttal to EOS, and I’ll say this too: from what this dead ex president has seen of new arrivals on the Other Side, many people who at ripe old ages under go intensive efforts to prolong life while in a state of extreme health decline are often subjected to much pain, discomfort, and loss of dignity (at great financial expense, either to their estate or an insurance plan) due to the meddling of some family member who is in denial about the inevitability of death. Letting someone go with relative peace into the realm of death is not the same as executing the ill or elderly, not matter what the right-wing bullshitters say.

Dear Mike,

I don’t quite get your opening line “I’ll bite” but I assume you were having dinner while contemplating political philosophy, and I am honored by the attention you devote to my prior statements. I don’t think all the ways you characterize my views are correct, but that’s okay. I am not and never have been a philosopher; I was a lawyer, a politician, and a statesman; I sought and found practical solutions for actual existing problems of social, commercial, and political relations between people. We, the Americans of my generation, found those solutions (imperfect as they were), thru Revolution and by constituting new government.

You say dear Mike that “On the other hand, a (contemporary) defender of natural rights would say that the slaves did in fact have rights, just as all humans do, but that their rights were being violated.” I have no quarrel with that at all, except to say that a “right” that is not recognized by the enforceable Laws of society is not, speaking just as a practical matter, an actual Right at all, but rather a mere abstraction. Men in my day — and come to think of it, women too, though in my day I didn’t think of them except in certain narrow spheres — did not live by abstractions alone; nor do people in your day, I think, live by abstractions alone. People need enforceable, existing, actual rights.

Remember, Mike the idea of Natural Rights was born as part of a political struggle against the rule of Monarchs, who were thought to rule by the Divine Right of Kings. Natural Rights stood in opposition to such supposedly divinely created monarchial rule, affirming that certain rights were inalienable and not dependent on or created by law. This was a fine vantage point for taking on George III, and I was part of that in a small way; however, when it later came to the issue of establishing new government that would protect the inborn Rights of the people, this Natural Rights idea provided few useful — I mean, practical — guidelines. For who can say what is a natural right? Philosophers, I suppose; but what of when their philosophies create or identify Rights that conflict? The sacred right of property conflicted with the less sacred right of liberty — both in that man Locke’s work, and in every society of the western hemisphere. For we slaveowners defended slavery on the grounds that it was a vital form of property. And this is just the largest example of conflicting natural rights.

Now you may say, “that was an incorrect application of natural rights.” I’d not quarrel with that either, now; but I am no longer vested in slave property. While I lived, I was, and I daresay all living men of interest (which is to say, men of property and influence) will always see the world from a perspective shaped by their Interests. Hence, in Philadelphia we sought to balance one interest against another, looking for a practical frame of Government, rather than relying on all men to be angles who would selflessly see the truth of Natural Rights and agree on the exact extent of their boundaries.

And Mike, you say “If all it takes to establish a right is that it is fought for, than any successful use of force is establishing a new right, and rights are just whatever the present state of affairs is. If I knock you down and take your wallet, I have established a right to your wallet, and if I kick you and make you stay down, then I have defended that right. It seems like if you believe that rights carry any ethical value, then we are back to might makes right, and that the very definition of rights precludes the possibility of a right ever being violated.” I don’t follow all of that, but I’ll just say Madisonian Revolutionaries believe in the rule of law, and laws created thru the Representatives of the people. Stealing my wallet – which i no longer have, as death took all my property, but I get your point here anyway – would not establish a legal right to such robbery.

But if Parliament passed a law saying the gentlemen like you were entitled to take the wallets of men of some inferior class — well, that would in my day be a legally enforceable right. Impressment and slave trading were widely practiced and are worse offenses against liberty than wallet stealing; and i think ccmparable offenses take place in your day, too, with legal backing. (Think home foreclosures in some cases and termination of health benefits to someone who’s paid every premium on time, but who’s reached their life time benefits cap — one of the exploited hourly laborers who works at Whole Paycheck, perhaps).

Of course, back in the day, one of our grievances was that the courts were not independent of the King or parliament’s majority, and thankfully over time that has changed some. Hence, the judiciary sometimes protects human rights, at least in some places.

I don’t think I have said that Natural Rights don’t exist as an abstraction; I have tried to say that abstractions by themselves, devoid of social context, are a weak basis on which to basis a claim to a right. If all humans have natural rights, and are born with them, then why are men so commonly denied them? Because of social relationships. If in North Korea, Florida, and what was until recently Rhodesia, the people all have the Right to Vote and the right to adequate food, when then are those rights not evenly evident in actual life? Can a starving person, or a homeless person, or a person denied adequate health care, go to court and win one of those rights based on a claim of Natural rights? Not likely, not even if they evoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

So, the truth is: No right exists that was not fought for. But by fighting I did not mean mere highway robbery type fighting, but rather the kind of collective fighting that gave birth to this country.

Please excuse the rambling in this “post” — I am more lawyerly than philosophical, and while I have much respect for Mr Mike, I don’t quite get the passion by which abstractions devoid of historical context provoke. No contemporary advocate of Natural Rights has successfully laid out a case by which all will agree on where the boundaries of natural rights begin and end. There are natural rights arguments for and against the right to terminate a pregnancy, for instance.

Men usually pick their desired outcomes and then find a philosophy to advance that goal. Natural rights can be a useful weapon — my friend Mr Washington was much taken with its rhetorical beautify in attacking George III — but it is far less than a viable means of government. Government requires a method of balancing conflicting interests, and natural rights fails on that score.

But so too does the constitutional system we devised in 1787, as it has evolved into its existing form, fail to balance such conflicting interests. What was innovative, a constitution structured to ensure property protections, is now, examined comparatively, rather a static straightjacket. But that’s another topic…..

@ EOS
“His terminology, “QALY” or Quality Adjusted Life Year is pervasive in the 1000 page draft of the health care bill.”
Source please.

Mr. Madison,

I think you are misunderstanding natural rights theory. While they have been used as a rhetorical and political tool, the theory as expounded by it’s sincere proponents is this: that rights are objective facts, just as facts about the physical world can be objectively true. It is not a matter of opinion or social context that, at sea level, water boils at 212 F. Similarly, one might say that it is objectively true that people have a right to person and property. Now, they may be wrong about that, just as they may be wrong about scientific facts. But just because people used to think that the sun circled the earth, that doesn’t mean that astronomy changes over time, and new scientific laws came in to being and old ones died out; it just means that the laws that were already true were better understood, and more completely discovered. The fact that Jefferson believed in natural rights and yet owned slaves is not necessarily a contradiction. It may only mean that Jefferson was mistaken about the true nature of natural rights, just as the fact that I may hold some scientific views that will one day be proven false does not mean that there is not an objective scientific truth.

Now, this is not to say that I believe in natural rights, or rights of any type for that matter. Jeremy Bentham, a teacher of JS Mill, was an early philosopher of utilitarianism, the philosophy that a moral action is that which creates the greatest net gain in collective happiness. He wrote (such a great line) that rights are “nonsense upon stilts.” Rights are purely a moral proposition. To say that people have a right to something is to say that it is “good” in the moral sense for reality to conform to that right. What Bentham meant is that rights themselves do not enter directly into utilitarian calculation, but only indirectly to the extend that they create a net increase in happiness. If the beneficiaries of slavery gain more happiness than the slaves lose, then it is moral for slavery to continue, and it would be immoral for slavery to be abolished (not that Bentham would have argued that, I don’t know). You could then say that once enough people got sick to their stomachs over slavery, utilitarian calculation then favored abolition, but that leaves you with a chicken/egg problem: some people incorrectly believed that slavery was immoral, but as more people came to hold this false belief, it at some point became true.

But none of this is to say that I believe in utilitarianism either, or any moral truth, for that matter. A statement like “I am 6 feet tall” is either true or not; feet are a definite unit, and I am some particular amount of those tall. But to use the same words to discuss morals seems strange to me. What would it mean for a moral statement to be true or not, in the same sense that the previous statement could be true? Might it not be more likely that we are just expressing personal taste? When I say “chocolate ice cream is good,” do I really mean that there is some objective goodness to chocolate ice cream, or am I just saying that I like it? On the same token, when I say that it is wrong to steal, am I saying anything more than that it displeases me to see theft?

What is confusing is your role playing and channeling dead people and even making up new views for some. A straight forward discussion would add clarity.

Wise and humane words, Billy. Thank you. The societies in which people take the best care of each are the most politically stable.

What did Jesus say: he that aids the least of these earns the regard of Jesus’s father? That I think is the sentiment of the verse but I’ve never done much verse memorizing.

EOS,
I am sorry but not surprised that you are confused by the ideas I express here, but let me assure you that I faithfully represent the ideas I had while I was a living person. These views are as consistent as the views of any practical person’s can be while confronting and acting to shape the actual circumstances of the world. You may imagine that you understand and respect the ideas and work of the Founding Fathers; but you honor, in my considered estimation, less of our actual work than you honor some dried out abstract rendering of our work – a plaster statute perhaps, not our real work or legacy.

Of course, I lived two centuries ago; much has changed since then. There is no reason you should assume that what I say I believe about say, national health care, is what James Madison believed when James Madison was living: It wasn’t, since such issues didn’t exist then. I think I’ve been self critical here on the venerable MM.com blog about many of my choices and biases. I reside in hell because I was a slave owner, as do all the presidents who owned slaves; actions have consequences! Denying people health care, which science and the vast increase in human wealth since my day has advanced to a state of true wonderment, seems to this dead ex president’s ghost to an offense comparable to slave holding: For it denies people the right to pursue happiness and in many cases it also literally denies them the right to live. And in countries with single payer systems, it seems clear that getting health care does not wipe out the savings of families, which is commonly so in these united States.

So, all three of the inalienable rights specified in the Declaration of Independence are harmed by the status quo health system in the united States…..and this system also puts the US at a disadvantage compared to other nations. How can so called patriots support such an inferior system?

But I’ll you what: No other dead ex president’s views are as well expressed by that dead ex president’s Ghost as are mine thru Mark Maynard.com.

Sorry, I meant to say Medicaid was for the poor. I don’t know if that auto corrected when I did a spell check or what. Medicare is with Social Security and Medicaid is for the poor.