~We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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.~

Some supporters of the universal healthcare movement continue to go to this phrase as the basis for concluding that the federal government owes each citizen the right to take care of their health needs.  Notice, however, that ‘promote’ does not equal ‘provide’, as is used in the clause mentioning common defense.

Judicial decisions in the states, largely relying on the 10th Amendment–the last of the U.S. Bill of Rights, leave several areas of government function solely to state governments.  They generally are considered education, police protection, and health providers.  Over time, federal laws that have encroached into these areas are said to have violated the 10th Amendment, and are therefore stricken.

The federal government has increased its ability to get involved in such areas by what is known as the “commerce clause” to the U.S. Constitution, but its legal value is considered dubious by some legal scholars.  In short, it allows Congress to be involved in certain areas that the Constitution does not otherwise allow its involvement, such as making laws affecting the general criminal code, if its involvement is needed to better control ‘Interstate Commerce’.

The idea behind leaving certain government functions to the states and others to the federal government may be becoming outdated by some voters’ standards, but at least that was the reasoning when the U.S. was founded and what the courts have relied on throughout the years.  As such, the preamble to the Constitution and Bill of Rights collectively could not be used to adequately justify sweeping healthcare reform, which I think is the point a previous poster was trying to make about the legality of Congress creating such entities.

More likely, however, such changes will rest on the commerce clause of the Constitution, so that’s where you should begin your point of reasoning.  Either that, or the U.S. citizens should begin to think about adding another Amendment to concretely make healthcare rights more than something we discuss on the internet and something that exists in reality.

Well, each side of Congress has now put forward a healthcare bill, and neither republicans or democrats are framing the issues the way I believe they need to be for an informed American public to become involved in this decision.

I think most people still don’t talk about this issue in a way that properly frames the dilemma for Americans. The cable news’ folks mire the discussion in an “us vs. them”, democrat v. republican, liberal v. conservative tone that does not advance the debate. If you walked up to most Americans and asked them how they felt about healthcare, they’d most likely just spout off whatever they’ve heard someone say that comes from “their” political team. This issue is important enough that we need to get past party lines and critically discuss the issue.

This issue is complex, but I feel like there are two main concerns Americans have. We want to take care of our fellow citizen, yet we don’t want to sacrifice our holy individual liberty. Ensuring the health of our friends and neighbors may rank so high on a list of a voters priorities that it becomes the ultimate moral imperative. For others, maintaining complete individual freedom becomes the number one goal politically. While we all don’t fall at the extreme end of either of those positions, the gray area in between is where we position ourselves in this debate. There are important ideas that will follow from wherever an individual’s perspective takes them.

I don’t buy as much the free market concerns here, because, let’s face it, our health does not revolve around consumers making choices. While the market plays some role in developing new treatments, sick people going to the emergency room don’t think in the same terms as shoppers at a mall. Individual liberty, which is often convoluted with the free market in America (and usually the two walk the same path), does play a role here.  The market plays a huge role in healthcare innovation, but on the front of actually treating patients (which is all that seems to be discussed on this issue anyway), our free market decisions aren’t implicated much in our healthcare choices.

If our tax dollars are the single thing funding our healthcare, and we want government officials to be stewards of those tax dollars, then we need government to control other areas of our lives. What we eat, how we indulge, how fit we are, become issues that government necessarily must begin to control. If not, we risk putting all of our salaries into a big pot to take care of our laziness as individuals. Government control of our appetites must follow a government run healthcare option, for better or worse.

Those that want to maximize this liberty, however, must vote that course with full knowledge of the cold-hearted nature of that position. Sure, we can live as a nation embracing individual liberty and personal freedom, but we must know that there are some in our world that cannot afford the basics, who will suffer because of that position.

Right now our health care plans involve the government too much for those wanting freedom, and too little to make their controlling the healthcare industry worthwhile. We need to get off the fence and move one way or the other, but each of us needs to critically think about the decision. That critical thinking needs to come from honesty with ourselves, however, and not the party lines we hear from cable news.

For a while now discussions on healthcare dominate news programming.  It appears this won’t be changing soon.  I figure most of us have been thinking about it at least vaguely, and, while I can’t yet speak with clarity on how I think we should handle serving Americans’ medical needs, I’m here to throw out some thoughts.

First, I think what you hear on tv is usually misleading and creates more of an obstacle for us in generating a cohesive policy to move our nation forward in how we deal with our health.

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems is that we don’t hear rational debate on the issue.  All the sound and fury from one partisan political agenda is leveled against the other, which leads to a shouting contest with the result that those counting on whatever show they’re watching to edify their thoughts on the issue leave without knowing anything they did before tuning in.

I think we have to really cultivate a public discourse on how we feel about providing for each citizens’ health needs.  Because of the proposals currently on the table, this discussion would necessarily involve some focus on what we want the role of our government to be–not only in terms of a healthcare discussion but as a whole–in our lives.

Creating this discussion is important, not only to gain a better developed plan to address our needs, but because we live in a democratic republic founded on the idea that the people elect a few to make decisions for the nation.  Those few should be basing their votes on the opinions and positions of those that elected them.

They, our lawmakers, have the greatest power to affect change (even greater than any elected president–gasp!).  If those who vote care about this issue, then they should develop clearly articulated ideas and express them to the people who they have elected in order to work within our democratic system to create a stronger future for all of us.  Though I’m prone to do so, I am not using hyperbole here–our ideas do matter, and if we don’t develop good, solid plans then are future won’t be looking very promising.

With that digression into our governmental system out of the way, I’ll get back on topic.  I think there are currently really two sides to this story, and they need to begin discussing the topic with the public at these foundations.  You either believe liberty is the most important issue, or you believe that we have a moral imperative to provide a baseline level of services for our fellow American.

If liberty is the most important issue for you, then you probably don’t want the government to get involved at all, and you certainly don’t want them to be the people calling the shots on your treatment.  The implications of the government being involved in healthcare for you are far greater than just your health and that of the other guys living on your block.  The foundation from which this camp approaches any government debate is that private individuals (and yes, those dastardly corporations) can take care of communities better and create a higher standard of living in our nation if the government gets involved to the least amount possible.  While not completely anarchists, to them, the government generally screws things up.

If the health of each American is more important to you, then you probably start with the thinking that America is a great country for different reasons.  We are wealthy, powerful, and technologically advanced.  You might also recognize that of all the countries that can say they meet those three criteria, the United States has higher levels of poverty, crime, and can display the most glaring disparities of wealth in the world.  Under this thinking, our duty to take care of our fellow man does not think first of what we as individuals can do, but eyes the great power of our government as the source of a solution to these problems.  We have wealth.  We have the medical technology.  Each citizen deserves to be cared for, and you think the government is the way to go.

For me, these perspectives capture the foundations on which public policy discussions should begin.  The odd thing is, individual liberty and the public welfare are not exclusive to one another.  Rational people would like to see their nation enjoy a great amount of both.  Oftentimes any idea sprouting from one surely leads to the same conclusion as the other.  However, sometimes, and this debate seems to be one of those occasions, the paths from each line of thinking seem to be closely related but have a stark disagreement as to the ultimate solution.

I hope I didn’t write that in a manner that is too biased towards my personal opinions.  Logically, both make sense.  Rational people could have a polite discussion about how to deal with our future problems in a calm and productive manner.  Unless things change, however, I don’t think we’ll ever see that discussion take place in the right forum to get the attention of our lawmakers, and any system produced without really discussing a plan from these foundational perspectives is not going to be as good as we deserve.

I’ve told my friends for a long time that I don’t understand why some of the steroid users would just come out and say they used steroids, that when they used them they weren’t illegal, and that they were no longer using them.

It seems ARod got some advice similar to that, and I think we can declare it a failure.

At this point, I don’t really care who’s been using, who hasn’t been using, or anything related to steroids.  The fact that his differing stories show that he’s consistently lied to all his fans about several issues is troubling.  For me, I just want to watch the game, and I want all the drama, doom and gloom over the sport to disappear.

One thing that concerns me as we move forward is the question of what will be banned and what should be banned.  Are we going to ban all things that could enhance performance?  Will that force us to lock players out of gyms so they can’t workout?  Deny them protein shakes?  Creatine?  Advil?  HGH?

I’m not sure where the line needs to be drawn from here, but I know that any clarity and resoloution isn’t likely to come soon.  It’ll be interesting to watch it all play out, but it would be far better to just watch them play on the field.

For starters, I know we’ve both been away from posting for a very long time.  The combination of busy schedules, holidays with family, and generally a lack of stories that piqued our interest are at fault.  I’m not promising I’ll post more often, but I certainly will try to.

Something that has bothered me over the past couple months is how much the politicians in Washington seem to be getting along.  Not long after the election of our first Black President, now former President Bush and President Obama seemed to becoming much better friends.  Obama even came out praising the Bush White House for working well with his administration during the transition.  Then Vice-President Cheney and the current VP Biden were seen associating, and Cheney performed an early “swearing in” of the incoming VP during an event at the Capitol building.

While the optimistic side of me wants to believe that this is a good sign, that politicians are returning to an only heard of time for those in my generation–a time when politicians got along outside the course of debate and debated feverishly over the nation’s most important issues.  The other side of me, however, views this as being something along the lines of “politics as usual”, where the superficial has changed, and changed drastically in that respect.  Part of me he true heart of the ideas and spirit of a Washington that has failed to produce the ideas and energy that a nation hungry to remain competetive in a changing world very much needs right now.

As you’ve probably noticed I’m wary of government regardless, but I’m not going to look favorably or disfavorably at this clean slate we have in the executive branch of our government.  I’ll proceed with caution with them and do what I think good citizens should do, keep a wary eye on an ever growing government body to insure that our most sacred ideas live on for generations.  

We are the safekeepers of our civil liberties, and have the responsibility to both stay informed and influence our policy makers’ decisions through the established democratic processes.