Concepts from the Web
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"Without your health you have nothing." What is more important than your family's health? If we believe the government's charge is to defend America,shouldn't that extend to defending Americans' health?
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In a post below, Jason Pitzl-Waters hits the nail on the head when he emphasizesthe moral dimension of the commitment to universal health care: "We need to beclear that the morality of this issue is not hazy. Everyone deserves basic care.Everyone deserves medicine when sick. To say otherwise is to reduce humanity tostatistics."
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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies inthe final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are coldand are not clothed."--President Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Universal Health Care (UHC?) should have strong pull from many corners: upper middle incomes to lower incomes and, increasingly, corporations that employlarge numbers of workers. The pharmaceutical and medical industries wouldn'tsupport it, of course, but the car companies sure would, as should airlines, banks,etc.
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but public health by definition is about shared, common responsibility (andindirect benefits to individuals).
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A weak area for the individual-is-center frame seems to me that it presumes thatall things are under your control
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Paul Krugman of the New York Times had an interesting commentary this week about how Toyota chose to build a new plant in Canada and not the U.S., primarily because of Canada's "national health insurance system, which savesauto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs inthe United States."
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As I was listening to the news on my way home from work, it heard a story abouthow the different of an auto worker in Germany and one in the US. A significantdifference is that every US made car had a Health-care Cost for current and pensioned workers of about $1200 that the German car didn't. I cannot remember the exact number; it may be +/- a few hundred. GM's health-care costs aregrowing at 10%/yr.
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Other elements of making the case include areas of enlightened self interest: I'mless likely to get sick if others around me aren't sick; our economy is stronger if itinvests a little in preventive care (and early childhood education, ...) than inexpensive emergency room visits costing 100X as much, etc
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Studies show roughly two-thirds of Americans believe it's a good idea toguarantee health care for all U.S. citizens, as Canada and Britain do.
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I can only suggest being persistent in pushing the "nation as family" frame andnot letting the debate get into abstractions. Keep it concrete in the realm of familyand friend relations and the kind of moral reciprocity that operates in them. Eventhe Christians know about the Golden Rule of treating others as we would wish to be treated. By extension, the legitimacy of any government is based on its moral
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