Is healthcare or eating a human right?

www.smashwords.com/books/view/614509


Link that sums up my feelings

I think the idea of healthcare not being a basic human right is an American one because the attitude here in Australia and from abroad elsewhere (places like Finland) is that kind of social insurance is a government's duty, not an accessory. It falls under the "serve the people" aspect of parliament. It'd be a bit like if a government-owned power company shrugged their shoulders and stopped supplying electricity because they couldn't be bothered. It's not a luxury by any stretch of the imagination and it's really hard to get nowadays anyway. They're doing their very best to crush it at the moment.

It may or may not be covered in the book, but the idea of a universal basic income and some of the grassroots solutions made possible by social media seem like the way to go. I forget the name of it, but there was this initiative run at coffee shops where people bought what they wanted and then purchase a reserve coffee that could be given to a homeless individual free of charge. They don't necessarily have to be earth-shattering, even small things help and I think the small things are what really matters when you get to countries with larger landmasses. The change isn't and simply cannot be instantaneous, so something needs to be done in the meantime to bridge the gap.

Another thing is that the American lifestyle when it comes to food is actually kind of shocking from an outside perspective. The sheer volume is a lot more than what's expected elsewhere, a friend of mine thought she'd had a stroke first time she bit into a pastry while visiting there. Even with her sweet tooth, the sugar was just too much for her. No joke, she was able to keep it in the fridge and eat it over the course of a couple days instead of one sitting as was intended. Grain is a much bigger part of our diets here, but it suggested to me that there was something up with the distribution of food and not just in the U.S. either. As we've discovered, a lot of that food you see on the supermarket shelf is thrown in the trash after the day is done. What's not purchased is just thrown away. Fruit and vegetables that don't meet the cosmetic requirements (i.e. what the customer thinks a healthy specimen should look like) are discarded as well because there isn't a "market" for them.

Basically, we're a global society that is just throwing away food. That's a pretty galling. If more of that "ugly" or perfectly good but "aged" produce was funneled to those who actually needed it, food would be so much more plentiful. It's why we've now got "ugly fruit" sections where people can purchase fruit and vegetables that don't meet industry standards. Again, it's the small things.