Defining terms, then and now

Here's a vintage NY Times story during the debates over forming Medicare that sounds oh so familiar...

Kennedy and Students Shout About Medicine
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 [1960] (UPI)--President-elect John F. Kennedy and a group of Georgetown University medical students had a brief debate tonight on socialized medicine.

The students saw Senator Kennedy emerging from Georgetown Hospital after visiting his wife and shouted: "Keep out socialized medicine!"

Just before he stepped into his car, Senator Kennedy looked over the top and shouted back:
"I'm for medical care for the aged and you're against socialized medicine * * * * and there is no disagreement. It's a matter of definition."

Nearly fifty years later, that "matter of definition" is still proving a sticking point in the healthcare debates. But I think that the key underlying question then and now remains whether health care is a human right, and, if so, that means the government should provide it for those in need.

One of the conservative talking heads pointed out that if you check the Constitution, you won't see a right to health care. While that argument is so ridiculous as to be laughable--I never noticed one to public education, to voting for women or blacks, or other rights we now consider inviolable--it does point to the fact that what we consider to be an inalienable human right changes over time. That said, I have trouble seeing how health care could be a privilege or a commodity and not a right.

And so maybe it all really is about definitions--what we define as a human right, how we define a "public option," and what we mean by "socialized medicine" or a "government take-over." It seems likely that those who win in the war of definitions for this historical moment will win this round of the healthcare battle.