I get the idea of people getting preventative care in order to avoid costly procedures down the line, but requiring people to visit a doctor for this purpose? Such is the latest healthcare language from John Edwards.
I understand healthcare to be a right, part of the right to life. Universal healthcare should be the goal of an affluent and just society. How that goal should be reached is currently a matter of great debate, and the pathos is dispensed with sound and fury. For every horror story from our healthcare system Michael Moore can tell, there are terrifying tales about every other system told in response. Dennis Kucinich sees hope in a single-payer universal healthcare system; Ron Paul thinks less government intervention is the way to go.
Believing as I do that healthcare is a right, I am sympathetic to political plans that would give everyone adequate healthcare. Nevertheless, I am also very skeptical of such plans, especially those that would require a consolidation and centralization of power. When Edwards speaks of mandatory doctor visits, he doesn't ease my tensions about government run healthcare programs.
Whoever is in power over a universal healthcare system will have control over how the system is run, particularly over what requirements are made upon doctors, hospitals, and patients. This is scary. Nevertheless, we have an obligation to work for a society where everyone has access to quality heathcare.
What to do? What to do?
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