One of the primary distinctions between America and most every other country in the world is our belief in human rights. We hold a distinct position in our belief that all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights that were endowed to all men upon their birth.

So what is the meaning of "unalienable right" as used in the Declaration of Independence? Unalienable means something that cannot be transferred or assigned (given to another). In this case we are considered "endowed" as being part of us that cannot be separated. These rights are also known as natural rights. Rights derived from nature and not granted by any government.

It is also understood that rights come with responsibilities. We know that the right of freedom of speech comes with the responsibility to use that right without infringing upon others. We have all heard the saying that freedom of speech does not give you the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. Although this saying is partly correct the truth is you absolutely DO have the right to say it, but you also bear the responsibility for HOW you use it.

An expansion of the rights and responsibility position is that the responsibility is placed upon the person enjoying the right. In the above scenario Jack could not be held accountable for Tom yelling fire in the theater. Every right is predicated upon the duty of the individual to use that right unless and until it infringes on the right of another.

Each and every right has a direct bearing upon the operator of that right. The person bears the cost of enjoying that right as well as the benefit that it entails. For instance; we have the right to freedom of press. We can write and/or read anything we may wish to but we must purchase, burrow, or otherwise legally obtain that item. We have the right to freely move about the country any time we want but we do so by our own means.

Should we as a citizenry, because we have the right to freedom of the press, demand that the government purchase our books for us? We have the right to keep and bear arms; should the government provide them to us? We have the right to travel freely about the country. Should the government also provide us a "free" means of transportation?

The answer in each and every one of these is a resounding NO. First of all our rights do not come from the government, the government is only supposed to protect our rights from being unjustly taken from us. Anything the government provides the government can take away and therefore it is not a right.

There are those who say that "universal health care" is a right, but how can that be? I would agree that each and every person in this nation should have equal access to health services. And just as I cannot afford a million dollar mansion, I purchase what I can afford. Because I cannot afford to eat steak and lobster every day I make due with hamburger and lunch meat. I do not begrudge the person who has earned a living and can afford more, good for them.

And because I cannot afford to fly to the Mayo clinic to receive the best possible health care I go to my local doctor and get what I can afford. Most people forget that a mere fifty years ago, (less time in many places), there was no health insurance. We bought and paid for health care from what we earned and we paid as best we could. And we went only when we absolutely had to.

Of course health care costs were much lower back then before the government got involved with regulating every aspect of our "care." There is not one government agency in existence today that runs efficiently in spite of the trillions of dollars the government takes from us each year. Do we really want the same government that has bankrupt the nation to also add another layer of costs to an already out of control industry?

I have heard from many liberal organizations that they want the government out of the bedroom and their laws off their bodies. They state that people should be free to do with their bodies what they will and they do not want to have government interfere in what they see as their "right."

I would have to say for the most part I agree with that logic. And using that logic I can also say that even though I do not agree with a person's lifestyle or choices I believe they have the right to do as they will as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of another. That being said; a right also has its responsibilities. If a person wishes to engage in behavior that puts them at risk for contracting a deadly virus, dealing with pregnancy, overdosing, or any of the myriad of dangers that await us in life, they also must bear the cost. As Andrew Wilkow, Sirius Radio talk show host says quite often, "Your freedom to be you includes my freedom to be free from you." It is the individual who is responsible for the decisions they make and the rest of society is not and should not be responsible for their care.

Remember, health care is not "free" someone has to pay for it. That someone is me, my neighbor, Joe the plumber and every other hard working American. The money we earn is our property and property ownership is a right. Why should I and the rest of us have to pay for others reckless behavior? This is an infringement on OUR rights.

The question then arises; if a person has a right to universal health care then whose responsibility is it to pay for it? Remember, rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. And by establishing those that have a responsibility to pay for another's right you establish a class system which further divides our country.

We actually have a version of universal health care in existence today; it's called the Veteran's Association (VA) Medical System. This system takes care of the medical needs of the military veterans of our nation. I have used this system personally and have found that, for the most part, a person can get adequate medical care. Of course you have long lead times, some times a month out, before you can get in to see someone and most often it will not be a doctor but a physician's assistant. They are always crowded with waiting times to pick up prescriptions of sometimes more than hour and some visits as long as four hours total.

The VA, as with every other government agency today, is mired in red tape. Each and every action of the staff has a specified procedure that must be followed to ensure everything is done a certain way. There is no deviation from the prescribed list. When I was first seen at a VA hospital for injuries to my back I received in Afghanistan the "list" required that I be seen by the Physical Therapy unit. I was given pain drugs and muscle relaxers. Next on the list was spinal injections and then the referral to the neurologists.

Then in the middle of my treatment my job required that I move. I checked in to my new VA medical center to continue my care. The new doctor saw my chart but could not send me directly to the neurologist, oh no, I had to first be seen by the physical therapists, more pain pills, spinal injections, etc. This is what the list says must be done, even though I had already gone through the list at the last hospital; it had to be done by "their" staff.

A year later I moved again to another VA hospital thousands of miles away. I checked in and through the modern miracle of computers my file was transferred and all was wonderful. Well, after another round of physical therapy, more drugs, spinals, etc. I was then able to see the neurologist who looked at my cat scans and pronounced that I had indeed ruptured two discs in my back and one in my neck. However, because the inter-spatial distance between the discs hdd not reduced to a specified dimension they were not allowed to operate to fix the problem. He could tell I was in pain and asked if I wanted more drugs? I asked if the operation would make it so I was no longer in pain and he assured me that in the majority of cases the procedure would remove or greatly diminish the pain I was feeling but he was not allowed to operate because of the procedures the government places on them. It is their position that pain can be mitigated by the use of drugs until such time as the patient's condition meets the requirements and that pain was not a factor as that could be controlled by drugs.

This same mentality will be entrenched with any universal healthcare system our government would create. It is the nature of governments to document every minutia of what transpires and the cost to implement and maintain such a system will be astronomical.

Currently in our society many people do not go to their doctor for common colds and sniffles. We go to the pharmacy and get our cold medicines, get plenty of rest, chicken soup, etc. However, if health care is "free" then why would you spend your own money on cold drugs? Just go to the universal health care clinic and get if for free. Heck every time someone stubs their toe they will be at the clinic for their free health care, just get in line. But we won't mind waiting because it's free and the staff won't care how they treat you, after all your not paying for it.

And those who do the right things, exercise, eat healthy, and take care of themselves will have to pay for the burden of those who abuse themselves and the system. Where is the right of these people to not be unjustly burdened with paying for someone else's abuse? Will the government then have to limit caloric intake of obese people? Well they have the police monitoring people to ensure they are not engaging in unsafe sexual acts or sharing needles that spread HIV? What rights do those paying for the "free" healthcare have to ensure their money is not being wasted?

If government takes over the health care industry what recourse do the citizen's have if something goes wrong? The government cannot be sued if it does not give its consent to be sued. Either we will end up with no recourse if they block law suits or the flood gates will open if law suits are allowed because the government would have nearly unlimited funds for the ambulance chasers to go after.

As far as rights go remember one thing the government does not grant rights it can only grant privileges and immunities. Universal Health care is a privilege; but as with Social Security, in time the public will accept it as a "right". Once it has Universal Health care has begun any politician would be committing political suicide to try and remove it once it has been instituted. This would result in a permanent entitlement, like Social Security, that will increase the national debt to record levels that will place future generations into debt servitude. As in the immortal words of President Ronald Reagan "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."

Not only is Universal Health care not a right, it is also something we cannot afford as a nation. Every nation where Universal Health care has been implemented it has been deemed a failure. Those that can afford to pay for private heath care do so or stream out of those nations to come to America to receive the health care they desperately need. The long waiting lists for certain life saving procedures literally has people dying while waiting for their turn. So they come to the only vestige of real health care left in the civilized world, America. Let's not screw it up.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Lemieux

Just as with our current economic meltdown, we should have seen our healthcare crisis coming. America has the most expensive and yet not the best healthcare in the world. Certain forces have been at work to create this perfect storm. While plans have been proposed to increase access to health insurance and streamline information sharing by digitizing medical records, government has failed to identify some elephants in the room that need to be addressed.

Litigation

What distinguishes American healthcare from that of all other first-world nations is the prevalence of litigation. Medical tourism is burgeoning because patients recognize its enormous cost savings. The same surgery done abroad can be one-tenth of the U.S. price. Absence of potential litigation accounts for the difference. The cost of drugs in general, and vaccines in particular, are astronomical because litigation has been factored into the price. Physicians in America order far more tests than those in other countries because of the fear of litigation. Any effort by congress to control healthcare costs must begin with tort reform. There has to be a cap on malpractice and adverse drug effect settlements. Any new government sponsored insurance needs to require arbitration in lieu of litigation.

The Pharmaceutical Industry

Years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation to beware of the military-industrial complex: the industry of war fuels the need to have more wars. A parallel can be seen in the pharmaceutical industry. Continual drug development with escalating cost is a self-perpetuating phenomenon. Antibiotic resistance is the pharmaceutical industry's best friend. New antibiotics with increasing potency are constantly being developed to overcome drug resistant bacteria. As soon as a new antibiotic becomes marketable, drug sales representatives generously supply doctors with the new drug. This drug should actually be used sparingly and for specific drug resistant infections, but because of the convenience, doctors frequently give away and prescribe the new antibiotic, it becomes widely used, and the result is more drug resistance requiring even newer drug development. Somehow, this kind of drug overuse has to be controlled.

The U.S. is the only country in the world that allows drug advertising. Choice of drugs should be left to the treating physician without the pressure of patient demand for the newest and most expensive version. Many new drugs are "me too" drugs, just slight modifications of older tried and true drugs. The difference is in cost, not efficacy. Advertising for non-prescription drugs constantly reinforces the notion that the only answer to any discomfort is a drug, a notion that has become as American as apple pie. Because of widespread advertisement, Americans unthinkingly take nonsteroidal antiinflammatories, which have potential serious side effects such as gastrointestinal bleeding and kidney failure, for such non-life-threatening conditions as the common cold. Risk outweighs benefit in these cases. We need to revert to banning drug advertising.

Physician Behavior and Training

American physicians habitually order more tests than are necessary. Clinical guidelines based on research have helped assuage this wasteful behavior. For instance, years ago, research found that routine chest X-Rays were of no benefit for annual physical exams. Similar guidelines have been established for taking X-Rays for ankle sprains. Finding what are the most unproductive tests and establishing national guidelines for when to use them could help bring down cost.

The price of our technological progress is the loss of clinical skills among the current generation of physicians. In an article entitled The Demise of the Physical Exam (Jauhar 2006), the author, a professor of medicine, expresses the prevailing view among today's physicians: that the physical examination is "an arcane curiosity," performed as a ritual that preceded their real tool for problem-solving-- technology. For centuries, doctors have been taught to begin with a thorough history and physical examination followed by tests to finally arrive at the final diagnosis based on the total information gathered. The current method virtually eliminates the initial steps. Doctors perform a cursory history taking and physical exam, and then order the tests related to the patients' symptoms to obtain a diagnosis. With this method, I have witnessed not only excessive waste from unnecessary tests but also the misdiagnoses of common conditions such as small bowel obstruction, congestive heart failure, and appendicitis. This sea change in medical practice constitutes one major reason why American healthcare has become so expensive and yet less than satisfactory. There is a dire need to retrain physicians to return to basics. And the need is urgent because the medical trainers are losing the very skills they should be teaching.

Over half of the American public recognizes that the Western medical approach has limitations and seeks complementary and alternative care. Skeptics among the medical establishment scoff and explain away the trend by saying that these patients "weren't very sick to begin with." What they fail to recognize is that Western medicine, while having advanced treatments for advanced diseases, have far fewer remedies for early-stage disease, or, the "not very sick." Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that illness begins with some dysfunction in the host that causes him or her to succumb to disease. Unlike the Western approach, which focuses only on disease, Eastern medicine also strives to restore the patients' weakened function to regain health. Familiarity with this approach among primary care physicians could not only bring down healthcare cost but also enhance physician satisfaction with work. If the physician prescribed herbs for the common cold, there would be fewer cases of bronchitis, the leading condition for which antibiotics are overprescribed. If acupuncture or acupressure were first-line treatment for back pains and soft tissue inflammation, patients would improve. This would lead to fewer MRI's ordered and fewer surgeries performed. If acupuncture and herbal therapy were first-line treatment for infertility, it would eliminate the enormous cost of in-vitro fertilization in many cases. In the past decade, the insurance industry has begun to recognize that some forms of complementary care obviates far more expensive treatments such as surgery and are adding them to its covered benefits. It is time for government-sponsored insurances to awaken to this fact.

In the past decade, the number of medical school graduates entering family medicine and internal medicine training has dropped by half. The shortage of primary care doctors has led patients to overuse costlier secondary and tertiary care facilities such as emergency rooms and hospitals. Several factors account for physicians' disenchantment with primary care. Compensation is low when compared with specialty careers. Bureaucratic paper work is daunting. Often primary care physicians are frustrated because they have no means within the Western paradigm to treat common conditions. The very reason for entering the medical profession, to help heal and relieve pain and suffering appears unachievable, and they see themselves as mere triage agents. If these physicians were able to use complementary and alternative medicine, the gratification of seeing their patients actually improve would certainly boost their level of job satisfaction.

Other players are insurance and patients. The private insurance industry has recognized that prevention is more cost-effective than cure. Many offer prepaid health plans and cover routine physical examinations. Medicare, to date, retains its antiquated policy: coverage for disease and not prevention. It is time for Medicare to enter the 21st century. Patients used to pay the doctor directly for services. Now, usually a third party, the insurance pays. Now, no longer aware of costs, patients feel entitled. If they have insurance, every test and treatment should be covered. The media sensationalize such cases, portraying the patient as victims and insurance companies as demons for not covering exotic treatments that have a low prospect of cure. Such cases often result in litigation, of course, further driving up cost. It is time to educate doctors and patients alike about cost and to behave responsibly. Correct treatment requires correct diagnosis. This fundamental principle applies to finding solutions to our healthcare crisis.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Patricia_Tsang

While you are employed, you may have access to a drug benefit program. This is probably the most valuable benefit you will ever have, considering the high cost of prescription medication in the United States today. But once you retire the story changes. Few retired Americans have access to a drug plan, either because the plan is not available once you are no longer employed, or the cost of maintaining it is out of reach. One option you have is to enroll in the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Part D.

The government launched this initiative to respond to the escalating cost of medications. Because seniors as a group tend to use more medication than most others, it was thought to be a way to give seniors access to lower cost drugs. But, let's look more closely at some of the problems associated with Plan D.

Basically, as a senior you have been encouraged to purchase coverage in the Medicare plan. When launched, the government was hoping that a large majority of seniors would opt to join. They have found that that hasn't been the case. Unfortunately, this has led to a new problem. Because of limited enrollment, the cost of premiums is already relatively high and is projected to continue to keep rising. Not too comforting for a senior on a fixed income.

But even that probably wouldn't deter seniors from enrolling. At least then they wouldn't have to worry about paying for their medication and could budget for the premium cost. Well, that's not exactly how it works.

In addition to premiums, members of the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan are also faced with co-pays. So while Medicare covers a lot of the cost, members must pick up the rest. On an expensive drug, this can amount to as much as $90. per prescription.

Drug prices through the plan rose about 9% on the fifteen drugs most prescribed to seniors. And this increase occurred in a single year. Price increases are expected to continue annually, although hopefully not to this degree. Now you may think this is not a real problem for the individual senior. But it does affect them in several ways.

For one thing, if Medicare is forced to pay more for prescription medication, they will have to pass these increases on to members in the form of premium increases, in order to maintain the viability of the program.

A second concern is that as costs increase, so does the amount paid out as a co-pay by individual plan members.

But probably the biggest reason for apprehension is related to the gap in coverage that occurs after a senior spends about $2400. on their prescriptions. This gap is reached much more quickly with drug prices on the rise.

In Part 2 of this article, we'll look more closely at the gap in coverage that is part of the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Part D and how this gap is affecting seniors.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carolyn_L.