I was just xposting a thought I had about right vs privilege ... here it goes:

I was reading a series of historical books where the theme applies to the HCR bill.

Is access to health care a right or a privilege?

If you think it is privilege then you probably think the HCR bill is a good thing because it expands the group of people to have this privilege. Of course it is expensive but privileges are, after all, expensive.

If you think health care is a right, then you know the HCR bill is step back. Because what this bill does is further parcel up access to health care; it says one group should get less, another group should pay more, and another group should profit from all. A right that is divided and parceled is no longer a right but a privilege. The HCR bill denies that we are humans and defines us as monetary resources to be forever exploited by profiteers.

for Medicare/SocSec -- sound familiar???

Social Security is not that tough. We know what the problems are, my friends, and we know what the fixes are. We've got to sit down together across the table. It's been done before.

I saw it done with our -- our wonderful Ronald Reagan, a conservative from California, and the liberal Democrat Tip O'Neill from Massachusetts. That's what we need more of, and that's what I've done in Washington.

Sen. Obama has never taken on his party leaders on a single major issue. I've taken them on. I'm not too popular sometimes with my own party, much less his.

So Medicare, it's going to be a little tougher. It's going to be a little tougher because we're talking about very complex and difficult issues.

My friends, what we have to do with Medicare is have a commission, have the smartest people in America come together, come up with recommendations, and then, like the base-closing commission idea we had, then we should have Congress vote up or down.

Brokaw: Quick discussion. Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?

Sen. McCain?

McCain: I think it's a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. And with the plan that -- that I have, that will do that.

But government mandates I -- I'm always a little nervous about. But it is certainly my responsibility. It is certainly small-business people and others, and they understand that responsibility. American citizens understand that. Employers understand that.

But they certainly are a little nervous when Sen. Obama says, if you don't get the health care policy that I think you should have, then you're going to get fined. And, by the way, Sen. Obama has never mentioned how much that fine might be. Perhaps we might find that out tonight.

Obama: Well, why don't -- why don't -- let's talk about this, Tom, because there was just a lot of stuff out there.

Brokaw: Privilege, right or responsibility. Let's start with that.

Obama: Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills -- for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that.

There's that "should be a right" --weasely, indeed.

"Should be," but clearly to Obama it isn't -- or he would have had a whole different approach to his #1 issue.