PRay TeLL, Dr. Hash

<p></p> <p>Benjamin Franklin famously said, “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety.” The Corona virus scare tested Americans on this issue and we failed; at least the half the nation was willing to give up Freedom of Movement, Right to Assemble, Freedom of commerce, and even Freedom of Speech if it confl...

<p>There's lots of respiratory, meaning they affect your breathing, viruses, thousands maybe? The common flu is also a respiratory virus, which is why COVID19 is often compared to the flu, and rightly so regardless of any sanctimonious posturing about life & death you might hear. The various flu strains are estimated to kill about 50K people a year but the actual cause of death is normal...

<p></p> <p>Vaccines rely on the person’s natural immune system, and that’s different from person to person. Different vaccines have varying methods of action; for example, the most famous, polio, has both an active and inert versions. The active works almost exactly like exposure, but inert only gives the recipient immunity and can still be contagious. Europe uses active but the...

<p></p> <p>While training as a doctor, I did my Basic Sciences in England, and while there utilized their fully socialized National Health Service, the NHS. In comparison, during my medical training rotations in the United States, I served in The Bronx, East Oakland, and South Miami, three of the most notorious hospitals in the nation. I've also visited over 100 countries, spent...

<p></p> <p>There are political agendas in ranking healthcare among nations. Technically, world healthcare rankings don’t even use the same reporting criteria, but the biggest difference is they aggregate everybody’s outcome, not personal outcome. This measurement difference affects the very definition of “healthcare;” rationing by everyone receiving the same care, the egalitarian...

<p></p> <p></p> <p>Demagoguery is perhaps the most exploitable aspect of healthcare because it's literally a life-or-death situation. This, of course, leads to political manipulation based on ideological grounds, specifically, the ubiquitous liberty vs. egalitarian battle. One of the egalitarians most effective tactics is to “measure” healthcare, which sounds reasonab...

<p></p> <p>Healthcare plays on people’s fear, vanity & self-righteousness; that's a deadly combination that politics can’t fix, and a formula for upward spiraling costs. Only adversarial relationships can contain costs so the goal is for healthcare to remain as Market Forces driven as possible, with both private and public options, while recognizing that it’s a natural monopo...

<p></p> <p>There are a variety of reasons healthcare in the U.S. is so expensive; most people know that insurance is a poor way to handle healthcare costs because insurance is the practice of everyone pooling their money for rare, expensive events, but healthcare is not rare, everyone needs it regularly; therefore the insurance strategy is the main culprit; but there are other, l...

<p></p> <p>Healthcare consumers can be divided into three groups: those who can afford it and don't really care how it's provided as long as they get the best; then there's those who can't afford it and want the government to provide it as long as they get the best; and lastly, Free Market types who would be willing to shop around. These are mostly self-employed people not covere...

<p></p> <p>One of the repeated complaints against socialized healthcare is that people don't have the right to other people's labor; that patients can't force doctors to treat them. That's an easy argument to counter because as everyone knows, defendants have the right of an attorney in a criminal trial, and if they cannot afford it, the court will provide one. That's essentially...

<p></p> <p><span lang="en-US">The battle over healthcare centers on whether it's a Right or a voluntary market transaction? Some people try to make the distinction that since it's not enumerated in The Constitution, it's not a Right, but that's an unsophisticated assumption; there are many Rights not explicitly spelled out in The Constitution but have been “constr...

<p></p> <p>Let's review some of the other Rights people are always talking about:</p> <ol> <li> <p lang="en-US">Constitutional Rights are paramount though lots of people have other ideas what's more important.</p> </li> <li> <p lang="en-US">The Bill of Rights was more than an afterthought but less than Constituti...

<p></p> <p>The Rights of parents are not specifically mentioned in The Constitution; instead relying on the Parental Rights Doctrine, giving parents the right to raise their children without government interference, unless proven unfit. It's a history of legal precedent where parents were assumed to be the best caretakers for their children, and had a fundamental right to direct...

<p></p> <p>Children don't have a full set of Constitutionally guaranteed Rights like adults because they aren't considered mature enough to make informed decisions. Children's Rights have primarily been determined by a series of Supreme Court Cases and precedence from English Common law, and are fraught with arbitrary limitations: why 16 to get a Driver's license, 18 to vote, but...

<p></p> <p>Modern technology combined with authoritarian impulses and lack of regulations has dealt more of a blow to personal rights than any government agency because just about every Right enumerated in The Constitution can be trampled by saying a business is “private;” any amount of bias, censorship & discrimination is acceptable; made possible by the intrigues of Capital...

<p></p> <p>Natural Rights come from the concept of Natural Law, which was part of Greek philosophy. Natural Law advocates believe morals are encoded in people's DNA, or possibly endowed by a divine presence. To most people, if it's found in the Bible, it's natural. Basically, Natural Rights are the justification to insist morals, which are subjective, can override the traditional...

<p></p> <p>There are the rights you have in the law, mostly the right to be left alone, but that's not enough for a lot of people who insist there is a plethora of imaginary rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 30 rights imagined by the United Nations in 1948, is primarily egalitarian, without a hint personal responsibility; no people reaping the rewards or sufferin...

<p></p> <p>A positive right obliges action; for example, the obligation to pay taxes, or be forcibly inducted into the military. Luckily, there are very few of them because they are the exact opposite of liberty, which as counter-intuitive as the term seems, confers negative rights, meaning you are NOT to be subjected to the wants or needs of others, especially government. A pers...

<p></p> <p>There are a lot of dilettante non-lawyers who consider themselves Constitutional scholars, and repeatedly express their idea that Rights not explicitly enumerated in The Constitution don't exist; like the right to healthcare. Obviously, these people are unaware of the concept of Constructed Rights; Frankenstein-like rights cobbled together from other Rights, real or im...

<p></p> <p>Looking past the aura of divine creation, and the awe just saying “Constitution” brings to an audience, except for a few flashes of poetry and brilliant insight, mostly the document is lost in a sea of mediocrity. A lot of the writing is inapplicable, confusing, impenetrable, ambiguous, contextual, and in many cases, ignored. The vast majority of people can't list more...

<p> </p> <p>Life & law goes on: when a new situation arises, or even a new variation on an old situation, The Constitution is often looked to for guidance. It's at this point that the various interpretations come into play. There's no one right way to interpret The Constitution, and judges often don't always stick to only one. Outside of legal circles, the popularly-known way...

<p></p> <p>Of course, The Framers of The Constitution could not predict the future so they included an amendment process, but they probably didn't envision that what seems clear and unambiguous to some, would be so differently interpreted by others. Such disputes go to the Supreme Court to decide; however, even in the Supreme Court, interpretations among the nine justices often c...

<p></p> <p>At their essence, people are violent, and they would kill each other if they thought they could get away with it; The Constitution is mostly an agreement to prevent that from happening, but it also contains some aspirational concepts. It says in the Preample,”establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, an...

<p> </p> <p>Are Civics even part of the high school curriculum anymore? There's now an entire political party that doesn't seem to understand Constitutional Rights; particularly liberty, Free Speech, and gun ownership. They somehow think these Rights are in play; that a local or State government can place restrictions or simply vote them away? Safety is usually the given reason:...

<p>It's fair to say that a lot more is going to be said about Climate Change in the future; let's review:</p> <ol> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ecopiety is the new world religion.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The politics of Climate Change are the result of generations of eco-indoctrination.</p>...