From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
The UDHR was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 without dissent. The United States was a member at that time.
So, how are we doing? Despite constant criticism from the left, many progressive reforms from the past remain in force. We have Social Security, which provides retirement security for the aged, disability and survivor benefits as well. We have Medicare for the aged, Medicaid for the poor, the VA hospital system for veterans. We have unemployment benefits for the recently unemployed. We have Workers Compensation, which provides coverage for injuries and income replacement for loss of wages due to those injuries. (Workers give up their right to sue their employers for injuries as part of the W/C system.)
There is no right to food, though we have the Food Stamps program, which is substantial. We have minimum wage laws, but they are inadequate for a single-earner family, often necessitating a working spouse and child care expenditures. To assist low income people with children, we have the Earned Income Credit, which is substantial. We also have programs to assist with child care for the working poor. We have many homeless people, and private and public shelters for many of them, and soup kitchens. Virtually every public service has a provision for the poor and working poor, including utilities and bus rides, college tuition (a few grants and gazillions in loans available), and housing assistance. Most states offer breaks on property taxes for elderly retirees on fixed income.
We appear to be doing a pretty good job fulfilling the mandate of UDHR. Where we come up short is in the area of health care. With an employer-based system, employees lose mobility. Private insurance companies are bound to turn people away, and to inflict heavy overhead burdens on the system to protect their contractual prerogatives. Millions of people are under-insured, and in 2009 alone as many as a million people will suffer medical bankruptcy, with 60% of those thinking they had adequate insurance coverage. Millions more are uninsured, many by choice, many due to preexisting conditions, and others due to inability to pay premiums.
In summary, we have a wide array of social services available in this country. Most of them are under continuing attack by the right. We only need go one step further … universal health care provided by heavily regulated not-for-profit private concerns, or government.
For those of you who look at the left and say we never have a kind word, I beg to differ. Due to leftists who came before us, we have a wide array of benefits in this country for poor and disabled people. Just one step further now …
Piece of Mindful 