Congress may be out of session for the summer, but many issues remain foremost in the minds of most Americans. Top among those issues is health care, perhaps because virtually everyone, at some point in their lives, needs medical attention.
With that in mind, polling website Portrait of America, in conjunction with medical information website Docrates?, sought to find out how most people would respond to this question: "Is access to a doctor a right or a privilege?"
According to POA, fully 56 percent of respondents said yes, they believed such access was a right. Only 33 percent said access to a doctor was a privilege, while 12 percent said they weren't sure.
"Docrates believes this finding suggests the likelihood of further public policy debates over such issues as Medicare reform and universal health coverage," said a POA discussion of the survey. "For example, if Americans indeed believe they deserve access to doctors, do they also deserve similar access to prescription drugs and other medical benefits?"
"Health care is a hot topic in America. During the campaign of 2000, candidates expressed deep concern for uninsured children, escalating prescription drug prices, and patients' rights. Discussing health care was a good strategy, for no single national issue consistently evokes more emotion and passion in so many people," said the POA-Docrates team.
In partnership with Portrait of America, Docrates conducted a national telephone survey of 947 randomly selected adults on February 20 and 21, 2001. This particular survey was part of a larger medical survey being conducted at the time.
The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 3 percent, with a 95 percent level of confidence.
"In the wealthiest society in the history of Planet Earth, it is criminal not to provide health care to anyone who needs it," said one online poster who responded to the poll.
"One cannot have a right that imposes an involuntary duty on another. To conclude otherwise is to negate self-ownership and advance notions contrary to freedom," said another.
"The notion of the right to anything more than man's natural rights, "life, liberty, property" is absurd. If people consider health care a "right," then the people must necessarily provide income to those who take care of our health, i.e., socialized medicine," said yet another.
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