Is health care a right?

This article is a very controversial one it was written by Maggie Mahar who is a contributor to "The health care blog". one the main idea's of this article is arguing whether health care should be considered a privilege or a right. The author brings up many valid points about the flaws of the health care system and why some if it works and other parts are broken. The author states that low-income Americans are more likely to be obese, smoke and abuse drugs and self medicate which is a major reason why the poor are sicker then everyone else . Simply put it is expensive to keep a healthy lifestyle. There a 2 very different very radical sides in this argument. Many people think that it is our responsibility to take care of the poor and impoverish people in America. The problem with this is some people take advantage of others good hospitality and abuse the system. The other side of the argument are people who believe that you should work for your own health care and you should not wait for handouts.The Mrs.Maggie believes that you should work for your own healthcare but if you need a handout its OK as long as you don't abuse the system. She made a very compelling argument about her views of the current health care system and does not believe in either of the extremes she prefers the middle ground. I agree with her for the most part i think that we should not just hand out health care to everyone just because they are poor you need to work for it but i do believe that if you desperately need it there is no reason we should withhold it from anyone based on how much money they make. There is no right answer to big questions like this different people have different opinions on everything. The only thing we can do as a modern community is try to find a medium that will please both sides while still being able to help as many people who need health care as possible.

First Amendment Rights

For my first blogger post i decided to write about "Why the first amendment (and journalism) Might be in trouble" in chapter 19. I think this is a fitting topic because this assignment and blogger itself go hand and hand with this issue. They did a survey of current 9th-12th grade students in over 900 different schools and found out that over 50% of them thought the government should monitor and regulate what we put into our newspapers. This is troubling news because these kids are the future of America and half of them don't believe in the very first amendment that this country was built upon the first amendment and the freedom of speech.

Its really troubling to me when i see things like this people taking their freedom of speech for granted.it seems these days. Another survey given to high school kids states that 32% of them think that the first amendment gives to much freedom and 79% of then thought that flag burning was illegal. While i don't support flag burning and i don't support anyone who has the nerve to do it I think it should be protected under the 1st amendment. To tie this in with recent events think about the occupy movement that is happening all around America right now. People are gathering together and showing the government and big businesses that they are mad and they wont take it anymore. The government cant do anything about it because the protesters are protected by the first amendment like they should be if there was no first amendment none of this would be happening.

This article also reminds me of a story that i read on a news site one day. A woman who wrote in a blog daily about the news and what had been happening in the world somehow came across some leaked information about something going on in the government so she decided to post it in her blog. The government immediately shut down her blog and took her to jail and gave her over a million dollars in fines. The reason this was such a hot subject is because if this info had been posted on any other news site nothing would have happened because they are protected by the first amendment but that brings up the question what can be considered a legitimate news site? She was doing the same thing as any other news site but she somehow wasent "Official" This is were the first amendment gets fuzzy should this woman have been protected by the first amendment? I personally think that she should independent news is sometimes the only way to get info on whats really going on what better way to hear a story then from a person who was personally there. The government should not step in and shut someone down like they did this lady just because they write something unflattering about them. All people and all sources of news media should be protected under the first amendment.