So, Big Brother UN is putting its parasitic foot down and demanding that President Trump NOT repeal Obamacare without replacing it with something else, lest he be in violation of international law and human rights.
Really? I have read our Constitution many times and I have never seen the part where state-provided health care is a right. Maybe I just missed that part.
I think it would be wise for the UN to mind its manners, lest the world’s largest collection of career parasites finds itself looking for a new host nation. The current US president is not exactly enamored with the organization to begin with. Threats like this could result in an eviction notice and the loss of its greatest contributor. Move to Zimbabwe. I’m sure they offer state health care for all of its citizens…. NOT!
For all of the domestic whining regarding the unfortunate who will find themselves without Obamacare, just like they were before Obamacare, I have a simple solution for President Trump. Expand Medicare to cover those who will be uncovered when Obamacare goes the way of the Woolly Mammoth. The system is already in place. There, problem solved!
We’ve already seen that repealing Obamacare is politically perilous. Now there’s a new complication: It may also violate international law, reports The Washington Post.
The United Nations has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing the Affordable Care Act without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States. It turns out that the notion that “health care is a right” is more than just a Democratic talking point.
A confidential, five-page “urgent appeal” from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, sent to the Trump administration, cautions that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act could put the United States at odds with its international obligations. The Feb. 2 memo, which I obtained Tuesday, was sent to the State Department and expresses “serious concern” about the prospective loss of health coverage for almost 30 million people, which could violate “the right to social security of the people in the United States.”
The letter urges that “all necessary interim measures be taken to prevent the alleged violations” and asks that, if the “allegations” proved correct, there be “adequate measure to prevent their occurrence as well as to guarantee the accountability of any person responsible.”
[Read the memo from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights]
OHCHR requested that copies of the letter be shared with majority and minority leadership in both chambers of Congress and proposed that “the wider public should be alerted to the potential implications of the above-mentioned allegations.”
Apparently that didn’t happen. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s office said they didn’t receive the letter, and officials in House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s offices said Tuesday that they were unaware of it. The letter did make its way to the Department of Health and Human Services, where an employee leaked it to congressional Democratic leadership. A State Department spokesman said my inquiry was “the first I’m hearing of this.”
A spokesman for the U.N.’s human rights office in Geneva confirmed the authenticity of the letter, which was sent by Dainius Puras, a Lithuanian doctor who serves the United Nations under the absurdly long title “Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
The spokesman, Xabier Celaya, said Puras cannot comment on his Obamacare inquiry until it becomes public at the next session of the Human Rights Council in June.
None of this, of course, will deter President Trump and congressional Republicans, who are again attempting to get a repeal bill through the House. They scoff at lectures from U.N. bureaucrats, particularly on domestic affairs, and the world body has no practical way to impose its will on Congress. There’s also a logical question: If repealing Obamacare violates international law, wasn’t the country in violation before Obamacare? Puras addresses this by writing that the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights “notes that there is a strong presumption that retrogressive measures taken in relation to the right to health are not permissible.”
