Transcript Page 5

NARRATOR: BUT AMID THE SEA OF QUESTIONS, ONE RISES TO THE SURFACE.  A QUESTION UTAH’S STATE LEGISLATURE TOOK UP IN TWO-THOUSAND-SEVEN. A QUESTION DRIVEN BY STATE SENATOR SCOTT MCCOY’S PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO UTAH’S CONSTITUTION.

Senator Scott McCoy
My point for introducing an amendment, a proposed amendment, to say in the Utah Constitution that healthcare is a right and that it's the state's responsibility to make sure that everyone has access to affordable basic healthcare, is to get that conversation started, and to move the ball forward.

Senator John Valentine
It does really focus on this whole debate as healthcare is a right versus healthcare as something that you have to participate in and purchase.  If it is really guaranteed as a right, then the state will tax higher, and just pay for it for everybody and we'll end up with a Canadian system where we ration it not by who can afford it, but we ration it by how long can you wait? 

Judi Hilman
We are opening up a whole can of worms here, and to me that's what makes it so worthwhile and so interesting to work on is how fascinating is that to really ask those questions about what is the role of government?  Where does the role of government stop, and where does the role of the safety net or the charity sector, or the individual begin?

Brent James, M.D.
A funny thing happened to me.  I was teaching our courses in Sweden so I had a room full of Swedish physicians.  I went there because they have the reputation of being the finest socialized medicine system in the world.  And on all the data, all the graphs, they look great.  So I posed the same question to a room full of Swedes.  "Is healthcare a right?"  They laughed me out of the room.  They told me that I'd made a fundamental mistake.  They said you shouldn't use the language of rights to describe this problem.  I said, "Well what would you call it?"  They said, well we think of it as a shared social benefit.  That's a very important distinction.

(Okay well she’s perfect).

Mansoor Emam, M.D.
If you see a problem that is so fundamentally broken, so fundamentally wrong, if you sit back and say well it's beyond fixing, therefore I'm not going to do anything about it I think is more wrong than what the actual problem is.

John Nelson, M.D.
These problems are real.  They are especially real for people who don't have access to care.  If we really, really understood the stakes for all of us--financially, morally, and the public health standpoint, I think we'd all want to do our part to go forth.  There's a quote I like from... I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He said, "What lies before us and what lies behind us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."  I hope he's right. 

Senator Scott McCoy
I was hoping that the amendment would act kind of as, a hammer as a, a message, from the people saying, O.K. this is vitally important, you know.  No more task forces, no more study.  We know what the issues are, we know what the models are, let's put one together that will work for Utah, work for Utah citizens, so that healthcare, the healthcare system will work for everyone.
 
NARRATOR: THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT WAS NEVER PUT TO A VOTE.  IT WAS TABLED FOR FUTHER STUDY. 

AND THE QUESTION REMAINS. HOW DO WE CREATE A HEALTH CARE SYSTEM THAT IS ACCESSABLE TO ALL?  WHO HAS A RIGHT TO HEALTHCARE?