There’s been a lot of talk on the right about the “irresponsibility” and “craziness” of the Democratic candidates’ response to the debate question of providing “free” medical care to immigrants. Not least of the nature of this response has been the usual garbage gaggle of blatant lies and deliberate, knowing distortions, by the right-wing commentators, regarding the actual Democratic position, across the board.
To start, no one on the left is talking about providing “free” care to anyone. Medicare for All and other plans for providing affordable universal coverage to everyone within the borders of the United States are not about free anything. They are simply about achieving what every other advanced, industrialized nation has done, which is provide universal coverage affordably to every citizen and all foreigners in their counties. Something they do at far less cost and with far better medical outcomes than we do in the United States.
All Democratic proposals are about removing much of the profit motive from the provision of health care and replacing it with the same moral obligation to act that medical professionals are required by law to obey and, by the way, which are required by the Constitution.
The Constitution of the United States requires that all laws in the United States apply equally and universally to everyone within the borders (jurisdiction) of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution states:
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The Constitution of the United States unambiguously requires that we cannot deny to any person within its jurisdiction (within the borders and limits of the United States) the full and equal protection of the law. There’s no wiggle room on this without breaking or perverting the law.
I’m harping a bit on the distinction of what “jurisdiction” means because it’s enormously important. Jurisdiction defines where a nation or state’s laws apply and where they do not. Specifically, it is not legal to arrest someone and/or detain them without making them subject to the entire set of laws and regulations laws under which the arrest and detention took place. The same law that allows you to arrest and detain, requires you to apply all the rest of the law as well. You cannot legally or Constitutionally “carve out” a portions of the laws which apply to US citizens that can then be ignored in the treatment of non-citizens on US soil. All the laws apply to everyone, equally, ALL THE TIME.
For the quibblers, yes, there are certain laws that apply only to non-citizens, such as visas and whatnot. But the laws which appertain to citizens of the United States are the same laws which apply to everyone within our borders at all times.
And this becomes especially important when it comes to the provision of medical care.
The United States is required by law to provide medical care to every person on our soil, regardless of their ability to pay or their legal status. So claiming, as those on the right do, that we have no obligation to provide medical care to those being held in our Concentration Camps is false on its face. For the administration to claim that this is not so is pure sophistry and contrary to law.
I am a New York EMT and Paramedic. I’ve been a volunteer EMT for a dozen years and a medic for about half that time. As a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician in my community, I have responded to well over two thousand emergency medical calls as part of an EMS ambulance crew, responding to 911 calls. There are laws about how I am required to respond to such calls. A good, basic discussion of them can be found here.
At their core, these laws describe a Duty to Act which, simply stated, say that if I am assigned to an EMS response, I have an unambiguous duty to complete the call to the best of my ability. I am required to respond with carful immediacy, to assess, treat, and care for my patient or patients as prescribed by my protocols and to level of my training, and to deliver my patient(s) to a higher level of medical care — one of two local hospital Emergency Rooms or, in some extreme cases, to a nearby level one trauma center — as quickly as is practical and safe. I have no choice about doing this. If I am on duty as an EMT, I am required to act, and to act to the very best of my ability.
I do not, and in fact can not, under any circumstances, deny care because of race, gender, sexuality, national origin, citizenship status, ability to pay or any other criteria. I can’t even ask about such things. Nor would I, since I have far more important things to think about — like keeping my patient alive — during a call. When I am called to act, I have a duty to do so and to complete the call, no questions asked, no hesitation. No ifs, and, or buts.
Note that doctors, nurses, and other medical providers operate under the same or similar “Duty to Act” laws as we do. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) (Public Law No. 99-272), in a section titled Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) (§ 9121(b), codified at 42 U.S.C.A. § 1395dd), provides that:
Hospitals that receive federal assistance, maintain charitable nonprofit tax status, or participate in Medicare are prevented from denying emergency treatment based solely on an individual's inability to pay. Patients who must receive medical treatment include people whose health is in "serious jeopardy" and pregnant women in active labor. The EMTALA duty to provide treatment may be relieved only if a patient is stabilized to the point where a transfer to another hospital will result in "no material deterioration of [his or her] condition."
Similar laws apply to national origin, citizenship, etc. Again, a physical or hospital cannot deny care to a patient simply because they are not US citizens or because they cannot pay.
Right-wingers would have you believe it is legal and even moral to deny medical care to “illegals” on US soil. That it is somehow “pie in the sky liberal socialism” to provide such care and it is not required by law. They are wrong or are deliberately lying (fools or liars, the perpetual conservative question).
Until now, I have merely been describing the laws pertaining to medical professionals. But what about laws pertaining to Law Enforcement Officers?
“Law enforcement officials shall ensure the full protection of the health of persons in their custody and, in particular, shall take immediate action to secure medical attention whenever required.”
Now, this code comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. A code to which the US is signatory and which remains fully enforceable under US law.
So, when we come down to it, right-wingers do not have a legal leg to stand on. Medical care, under US and international law, MUST be provided to citizen and non-citizen alike, and law enforcement is required to call for care when those in their custody require it.
And medical care cannot be denied for an inability to pay or due to any factor including citizenship status.
It’s not about medical care being “free.” It’s about the provision of medical care being the unambiguous legal obligation of a civilized society, whether the patient can pay, or not.
But, until now, this discussion has been all about law. What else is there?
A Moral Duty to Act.
Right-wingers love to talk about “morality.” How “moral” it is to be a right-winger, and how “immoral” it is to be a left-winger.
As an EMT, I have an unambiguous legal duty to act. As a human being, what are my obligations?
Brief story. A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I (my wife is an EMT, too) were off duty, walking to the local supermarket, when a woman in front of us on the sidewalk tripped and fell. We were moving towards her before she hit the ground. We asked her if she was hurt (a minor scrape), helped her up, made sure she was OK. Little story, of no great consequence. But we could no more have ignored her than we could stop breathing for a day. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could.
But right wingers can. They can easily ignore basic moral duty when the victim is not white, not rich, not just like them, not “one of us.”
Morality that is not universal, is not morality at all. It’s just tribalism: All good stuff for us, nothing for you. It is the very opposite of morality, it is social narcissism. Even Hitler was nice to his friends and compatriots. It’s how you treat others, those unlike yourself, strangers to you, people you might not even like, that defines your relationship to morality.
Let’s look at another story:
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Yes, that is the story of the Good Samaritan, from the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37 (NIV), which is a Biblical tale which informs much of our American cultural attitudes towards compassion and charity.
It is a tale most likely to be referenced when a right-winger wants to justify their “moral” code. So does the story of the Good Samaritan, in any way, reflect the typical morality in words and deeds of the right? Of course not. It is the antithesis of their false moral code.
To put a finer point on it, a “Samaritan” would have been understood, in Biblical terms, to have been a foreigner, and outsider, not “one of us.” The point of the story was that the Jews of Jerusalem, the “experts in law,” refereed to in the story, the priests and the Levite (a member of a Jewish tribe) in the tale, choose the immoral and reprehensible path of ignoring the man in need. It is only the Samaritan outsider who takes the time and makes the effort to help out and spends his own money, and promises more as needed, on the care of the person in need.
So as we listen to the right-wingers talk about “free” medical care (something no Democrat is proposing), or how we have no obligation to provide care for dying toddlers in the American Concentration Camps being run for slimy profit in our national name, remind them that they are on the wrong side of both law and basic human morality. Remind them that the Federal officers in charge of these facilities are in violation of clear and unambiguous international and Federal law by denying medical care and failing to provide basic humanitarian needs to the children in their care.
It is only vile racism and paranoid xenophobia, and an inherent lack of basic moral code and human compassion that allows these right-wingers to claim that the US has no obligation to provide care, at whatever cost, to the refugees on our southern border.
I live by a code. I live by a duty to act. I am a liberal and my code and duty carry the force of law. They also carry the most basic moral code which appertains to every human being: Basic Human Compassion.
Right-wingers live by no code, and their cruelties and lies carry no force of law or morality. Their hatreds and racism compel them to act lawlessly and speak falsely in pursuit of evil and the destruction of the rule of law.
Don't let them get away with it.