Healthcare Morality
I would like to think that anyone reading this post would be of the opinion that everyone should have access to reasonably adequate healthcare.
I would like to think that anyone reading this post would be of the opinion that doing so is a humanitarian moral obligation.
Yet 400 million human beings on earth lack ANY access to basic healthcare. Some 5 billion human beings lack access to basic surgical procedures which would eliminate a third of all deaths of human beings resulting from easily treatable conditions like appendicitis, fractures, or obstructed labor.
Where is the outpouring of outrage at this lack of basic healthcare for our fellow human beings? Is one's moral obligation to insure adequate healthcare inversely proportional (increasingly less) to the distance between "us" and "them"?
We debate ways of providing universal health care for every single US citizen. The debate is not about providing universal health but rather about how to control the costs and how to finance it.
Even now, access to basic healthcare is available to virtually every US citizen in one form or another. It's not always easy. It's not always sought. We are not throwing anyone out of the hospital to die on the street outside for lack of ability to pay.
Yet when it comes to healthcare for the rest the world we are both myopic and extraordinarily selfish.
Where is our St. Teresa?
I would like to think that anyone reading this post would be of the opinion that doing so is a humanitarian moral obligation.
Yet 400 million human beings on earth lack ANY access to basic healthcare. Some 5 billion human beings lack access to basic surgical procedures which would eliminate a third of all deaths of human beings resulting from easily treatable conditions like appendicitis, fractures, or obstructed labor.
Where is the outpouring of outrage at this lack of basic healthcare for our fellow human beings? Is one's moral obligation to insure adequate healthcare inversely proportional (increasingly less) to the distance between "us" and "them"?
We debate ways of providing universal health care for every single US citizen. The debate is not about providing universal health but rather about how to control the costs and how to finance it.
Even now, access to basic healthcare is available to virtually every US citizen in one form or another. It's not always easy. It's not always sought. We are not throwing anyone out of the hospital to die on the street outside for lack of ability to pay.
Yet when it comes to healthcare for the rest the world we are both myopic and extraordinarily selfish.
Where is our St. Teresa?
Comments
Post a Comment