Health care is Constitutional!

There are a few arguments ignored by both the Supreme Court and the Washington Post editorial in the quest for universal health care.
First. It isn’t really ‘health’ care being talked about. The debate is really about access to medical care.
And nearly 90% of the costs in what we currently call ‘health care’ is really funding medical responses to our failure to provide ‘health’ care - which is defined as preventing illness and injury vs. responding to it.
In this context incentives aren’t nearly as important as investments when real health measures are called for.
Second. Our founding fathers wanted a nation that ensured for all the benefits of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. None of these are possible when confronted with a crippling or bankrupting medical procedure. At worst national health coverage is another federal jobs program. At best it provides a sense of individual security that is priceless. It has nothing to do with our loss of freedom.
Third. One of our nation’s greatest threats is bioterrorism or a pandemic that would affect every citizen and non-citizen alike. Do we really want catastrophically weak links in our ‘health’ care system?
And last, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes access to health care as a “universal” “human” right. This is assumed to include all Americans as well. And until we enforce this on the global level, every American will be at lethal risk from the consequences of infectious diseases be they from nature, lab accident or intentional release.
A healthy US is essential to a wealthy US.

Three lines depict our future

Dear Editor,
Sol Sanders and others concerned with present security threats need to consider another “graph representing the world’s problems” if they want to configure realistic solutions to the security dilemma’s we now face. This new graph uses three lines to represent reality.
The first upward growth line slopes skyward revealing the ‘exponential’ increase in the power, affordability and availability of all technologies. Technologies that can be used for unprecedented good like a vaccine to cure AIDS verses or to deliver incomprehensible harm like an engineered virus targeted to kill a specific population with similar genetic characteristics. Try to imagine a second holocaust more deadly than the first?
The bad news is that these increasingly powerful technologies tend to give advantage to the offense, not the defense. Israel’s defensive “Iron Dome” - highly effective at stopping missiles -- will become an unlocked aluminum screen door to biological, chemical, cyber or nanotechnology weapons when Israel’s enemies acquire them. Developing effective counter weapons will take longer, and not even of an intrusive Nazi-like police state persistently intruding on the lives of all of Israel’s potential enemies will prevent the development of catastrophically lethal weapons. And Israel won’t be the only target. Security in this hyper technological age is a short lived illusion that Sol Sanders’ “two mounting growth lines” tends to foster.
The second upward straight line in the new graph heads straight for the desired “upper corner” of “a state…free from suffering”. This linear line represents the human tendency to think in straight forward ways that usually misses the obvious explosion of change that comes from exponential events…like the explosive rise in debt from compound interest rates (Einstein called this the most powerful force in the universe), the spread of pandemic infections or the runaway environmental effects of a gradually warming climate. Sanders’ “common sense” thinking won’t register the real impact of the exponential changes that are now occurring on multiple levels and affecting nearly every aspect of our lives.
The third line that Sanders doesn’t seem to grasp is more akin to a dead EKG line. It’s a flat line across the bottom of the graph with no upward slope…only an occasional minor bump. This line represents the capacity of existing governments to deal with the problems ahead. Problems caused mostly by (but not limited to) the incongruent lines of exponential technological power and regular/conservative linear human thinking. Sanders (and others who think like him) refuse to accept the need for at least some government at the global level to deal the ubiquitous influence of globalized economic, health, education, religious, criminal, armament and environmental factors.
The International Criminal Court was one bump on this third line. It provides us with at least a token government capacity to deal with one significant threat we face, genocidal psychopaths, like Uganda’s Kony or Iran’s Ahmadinejad. With a global police force capable of dealing with these and others committing crimes against humanity we may have a chance at reducing at least some of the desire to acquire and use the destructive technologies now available to almost anyone.
Once the reality of this 3 line graph is realized there can be only two paths. We can continue as we are and prepare for the worse. Or, we can strive to adopt a global federal system of government where world law places human rights supreme to the existing rights of national governments that use weapons, money, pollution, and religious ideology to do as they please. We will never reach nirvana, but we will have a chance of maximizing our security without sacrificing our freedom.

War with Iran? Any other options?

In early March of 2012 many Americans were thinking ‘How close are we to war with Iran?’ Most experts were thinking ‘Too damn close!’

One might ask ‘Why are we faced with this serious possibility with our military and economy already over committed and limping. The answer is simple. Our leaders believe that Iran's leaders are committed to forcefully eliminating Israel. They believe Iran’s leaders words to “wipe Israel off the map” is literal.

Key question: Is this really Iran's intentions knowing that Israel won't go down without obliterating Iran? Are we to believe that Iranian leaders are OK with that? Are the majority of Iranians OK with that? Why aren’t they protesting? Are we OK with Israel starting a war with Iran or with our government helping Israel preempt Iran's nuclear capability? Why aren’t we protesting?

Key questions: What is Iran's conventional capability for crippling our weak economy? What is Iran's biological, chemical or cyber WMD capacity? Will they refrain from using their forces against us if we support Israel's attack? Are we willing to sacrifice tens of thousands, maybe millions of Americans and our economic recovery to help Israel? What other unintended consequences could befall us and the world if war starts. If Iran suspects an Israeli or US attack is imminent does Iran have the right of self defense and legitimate cause for launching it's own preemptive strikes?

The insanity of this serious situation should have us asking another key question. Is it time to yet to replace the current 'national sovereignty' system where each nation has supreme authority to start a war?

Is a global legal system that holds individual leaders accountable for their actions a more sane approach? Today, Virgina militia no longer prepare for war with Maryland over the rights to Potomac river water. Our federation of sovereign states have a court with “supreme” sovereignty to deal with such state differences. Is it possible to adopt a global system where justice, democracy and human rights have the supreme authority over the intention of powerful leaders?

The current system of global lawlessness is simply insane.
So here's the most important question.

Why do we keep using/defending the same system expecting a safe and sane result?