NationStates

Category: Repeal
Target: 456
Proposed by: Honeydewistania

General Assembly Resolution #456 "Freedom to Seek Medical Care II" (Category: Civil Rights; Strength; Mild) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.

The World Assembly,

Acknowledging General Assembly Resolution 456, “Freedom to Seek Medical Care II”, as a resolution that permits people to seek medical care in foreign nations;

Troubled by the poor wording of Clause 4, which prohibits a member nation from taking legal action against its medical tourists except for those violating World Assembly law, which could allow such tourists to evade domestic justice;

Believing that creating a class of individuals who are exempt from vast swathes of law means that people they harm are unable to secure justice;

Convinced that a resolution with such a blatant disregard for the national laws of member nations should not be enacted by this assembly;

Hereby repeals General Assembly Resolution 456, "Freedom to Seek Medical Care II".

"Yet another repeal for you ambassadors, but this time we invite other nations to draft up a replacement for this." declares Mr Hepperle, grinning.

There's no need to be ribbing about the 'II'.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:There's no need to be ribbing about the 'II'.

Alright

"We're in full support of this resolution. However, there's another significant issue: the target resolution's first clause reads as follows."

: Prohibits member nations from denying or restricting their citizens or permanent residents from traveling to obtain medically necessary healthcare in foreign nations at their own expense, subject to any restrictions previously imposed by the General Assembly, while allowing member nations to prohibit travel to nations involved in active armed conflict with the member nation,

"This implies a slew of other circumstances that can not be regulated against, such as:
Armed conflict within its own borders,
Armed conflict with another nation,
Other forms of conflict,
Natural and man-made ongoing disasters,
The slew of nations outside and, in some cases, inside the World Assembly which could violate the following:
Safety standards
Medical practice standards
Sanitation
Human Rights abuses
Discrimination
etc.

Not to mention that cross-border activities could hypothetically be committed by the person as well, but that's perhaps less of an issue.

Granted, most people with common sense wouldn't do such a thing, but we believe that some who are desperate or, more often,
simply aren't aware of the risks, could be put in a potentially life-threatening situation, and it might be helpful to at least include some,
though probably not all, of these in your resolution. Otherwise, approved."

Thanks

“Expand the ‘distressed’ clause with why this is a bad thing for member nations. Generally speaking, every point you make about the target resolution should involve some explanation of why this warrants a repeal.”

(OOC: Your [list] code is broken on the ‘distressed’ clause.)

Kenmoria wrote:“Expand the ‘distressed’ clause with why this is a bad thing for member nations. Generally speaking, every point you make about the target resolution should involve some explanation of why this warrants a repeal.”

(OOC: Your [list] code is broken on the ‘distressed’ clause.)

Alright

Kenmoria wrote:“Expand the ‘distressed’ clause with why this is a bad thing for member nations. Generally speaking, every point you make about the target resolution should involve some explanation of why this warrants a repeal.”

(OOC: Your [list] code is broken on the ‘distressed’ clause.)

How’s it now? What about the rest of the proposal?

Honeydewistania wrote:

Kenmoria wrote:“Expand the ‘distressed’ clause with why this is a bad thing for member nations. Generally speaking, every point you make about the target resolution should involve some explanation of why this warrants a repeal.”

(OOC: Your [list] code is broken on the ‘distressed’ clause.)

How’s it now? What about the rest of the proposal?

(OOC: The rest of the proposal, looking at it now, seems fine. I can’t see anything immediately wrong with any of the clauses.)

Fixed some typographical errors.

Honeydewistania wrote:Acknowledging GA#456 as a resolution to protect medical tourists and as the successor to the repealed GA#414;

"This sounds a bit odd. Why even mention the repeal...?"

Saddened, however, that despite the carefully laid out arguments in GA#415, the resolution that repealed GA#414, GA#456 still has numerous flaws that could cause problems to member nations;

"...ahhh, I get it. Unable to think of your own arguments, you're relying on someone else's. Do note, however, that the target resolution did pass, so the repeal's faults were fixed as far as voters were concerned. If I was you, I'd leave these first two clauses out entirely. They just make it look like you were indeed not finding enough wrong with the target, so you had to drag in the fact that a resolution like it was repealed once already. Also, you should probably name the target resolution at the start."

OOC: That is, after the words "The World Assembly".

Troubled by the poor wording of Clause 4, which prohibits member nations from taking legal action against medical tourists except for those violating World Assembly law;

"Why exactly should they be allowed to? As in, what is the fault you see here?"

Concerned that Clause 4 disregards national laws of the nations medical tourists travel to, which could grant immunity to medical tourists to cause havoc in member nations without penalty;

"And how, exactly, does one "cause havoc" by visiting a doctor in a foreign country?"

Dismayed that GA#456 fails to account for contagious disease spread as a result of medical tourism, which could result in unscreened residents to move to other nations and spread disease, causing epidemics which could easily be prevented;

"You seem to have missed clause 2, which states "Affirms the ability of member nations to set their own policies and restrictions regarding the in-bound travel of non-residents so long as such ordinances are in accordance with previously passed General Assembly legislation" given that no nation needs to let in a plague-carrier, as per existing resolutions on epidemic control, that argument seems to fall flat on its face. However, I'm somewhat surprised you didn't mention anything about how the target would allow convicted prisoners to travel freely, without any guarantee of them coming back to serve the rest of their sentence."

Distressed that despite Clause 1 of GA#456 permitting member nations to prohibit residents from traveling to countries engaged in an armed conflict with the country they are travelling from, it fails to consider a plethora of factors, which as a result permits unregulated travel to unsafe countries such as:

1. countries involved in an active armed conflict within its own borders;
2. countries involved in an active armed conflict with other countries;
3. countries severely affected by ongoing man-made or natural disasters;

"And why, exactly, is this a problem? If the person is stupid enough to deliberately put themselves in harm's way, I have two words for you: natural selection. As for the last bit, do remember that member nations are not required to provide such inbound non-residents any medical services, so in a state of emergency because of an ongoing disaster, I would think nations would focus on providing medical services for their own people alone, and thus no outsider would travel there for non-existent treatment to begin with. On the other hand, if the nation in question had no problem in providing such health services, then, again, I don't really see the problem here."

Worried that allowing unregulated travel to such countries could not only put an unnecessary strain on the existing healthcare systems in such nations, but it could also result in the death of serious injury of the medical tourists, defeating the goal of this resolution to protect said tourists;

"See above."

Disappointed that despite the concern of Clause 5 being raised in GA#415, which removes the obligation of member nations to pay for medical services of medical tourists that are unable to afford it, the clause remains completely unchanged; and

"This is a designed feature in the target due to massive amount of resistance for having the traveler's home nation pay for it. So what exactly do you think is wrong with it? Nations are still allowed to do so."

Firmly convinced that GA#456 is a resolution that causes more problems than it solves, and does not meet the goal of protecting medical tourists;

"First of all, the target intends to protect the legal right to become a medical tourist, not the actual safety of the actual person doing so. Can you point out where it says anything about protecting them?"

Araraukar wrote:

Distressed that despite Clause 1 of GA#456 permitting member nations to prohibit residents from traveling to countries engaged in an armed conflict with the country they are travelling from, it fails to consider a plethora of factors, which as a result permits unregulated travel to unsafe countries such as:

1. countries involved in an active armed conflict within its own borders;
2. countries involved in an active armed conflict with other countries;
3. countries severely affected by ongoing man-made or natural disasters;

"And why, exactly, is this a problem? If the person is stupid enough to deliberately put themselves in harm's way, I have two words for you: natural selection. As for the last bit, do remember that member nations are not required to provide such inbound non-residents any medical services, so in a state of emergency because of an ongoing disaster, I would think nations would focus on providing medical services for their own people alone, and thus no outsider would travel there for non-existent treatment to begin with. On the other hand, if the nation in question had no problem in providing such health services, then, again, I don't really see the problem here."

You fail to consider the possibility where one of our citizens goes to a dangerous country, gets injured, and then comes back to us. If I’m not mistaken, we have to provide inbound citizens with health services, even if they left to go to a dangerous place.

Yeah, actually, I hadn't noticed some of these problems. I expect I'll support this.

Tidied it up, took some of Araraukar’s suggestions. Anyone else has objections/suggestions to this?

Dunno if you want to incorporate my point as another argument for the repeal?

Flying Eagles wrote:

Araraukar wrote:
"And why, exactly, is this a problem? If the person is stupid enough to deliberately put themselves in harm's way, I have two words for you: natural selection. As for the last bit, do remember that member nations are not required to provide such inbound non-residents any medical services, so in a state of emergency because of an ongoing disaster, I would think nations would focus on providing medical services for their own people alone, and thus no outsider would travel there for non-existent treatment to begin with. On the other hand, if the nation in question had no problem in providing such health services, then, again, I don't really see the problem here."

You fail to consider the possibility where one of our citizens goes to a dangerous country, gets injured, and then comes back to us. If I’m not mistaken, we have to provide inbound citizens with health services, even if they left to go to a dangerous place.

Flying Eagles wrote:Dunno if you want to incorporate my point as another argument for the repeal?

Flying Eagles wrote:You fail to consider the possibility where one of our citizens goes to a dangerous country, gets injured, and then comes back to us. If I’m not mistaken, we have to provide inbound citizens with health services, even if they left to go to a dangerous place.

I'll think about it

“We stopped reading after the first clause, which seems strong enough in its own right to justify a repeal. Do you even need the other arguments?

“We’ll probably support this anyway but one strong argument is good enough.”

-- Júlía Maria Jónsdóttir
Economic Advisor to the Græntfjall WA Mission

Gruen gives good advice. And I know he'll hate me for saying this OOC, but in my view, it's because shorter repeals are open to fewer HM challenges. If you list everything you can think of and get one portion wrong, you get discarded. Whither goest thine incentives?

Graintfjall wrote:“We stopped reading after the first clause, which seems strong enough in its own right to justify a repeal. Do you even need the other arguments?

“We’ll probably support this anyway but one strong argument is good enough.”

-- Júlía Maria Jónsdóttir
Economic Advisor to the Græntfjall WA Mission

"We thank the Græntfjall WA Mission advisor for their helpful comment, and the proposal has been widely cut down to just that argument."

(OOC: On a really minor point, you use curly quotes in the ‘acknowledging’ clause but straight quotes in the ‘hereby’ clause.)

Kenmoria wrote:(OOC: On a really minor point, you use curly quotes in the ‘acknowledging’ clause but straight quotes in the ‘hereby’ clause.)

That will be fixed

Imperium Anglorum wrote:Gruen gives good advice. And I know he'll hate me for saying this OOC, but in my view, it's because shorter repeals are open to fewer HM challenges. If you list everything you can think of and get one portion wrong, you get discarded. Whither goest thine incentives?

In that note, this clause:

Affirming that allowing medical tourists to freely bypass national laws will result in a large increase of crime and violence in the nations they travel to;

Is factually untrue. Only a very small fraction of medical tourists will abuse the target to commit violent crime abroad, medical tourists make up a minuscule portion of those people entering any given nation, and nonresidents themselves make up only a fraction of the immediate population of a nation. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction is simply incapable of producing "a large increase of crime and violence". I don't know if it would amount to a HM violation, but the claim is untrue as soon as you put some thought into it.

Removed the ‘large’

"There is a clear case for repeal here and it is made well in the proposal, we would support a repeal. We agree with the decision to remove the adjective "large" but also wonder if "violence" should also be removed here. While crime would certainly increase, we think its unclear how violence would also increase and we'd be interested, if possible, in hearing a reasoning for why you believe violence would also increase."

Lime82 wrote:"There is a clear case for repeal here and it is made well in the proposal, we would support a repeal. We agree with the decision to remove the adjective "large" but also wonder if "violence" should also be removed here. While crime would certainly increase, we think its unclear how violence would also increase and we'd be interested, if possible, in hearing a reasoning for why you believe violence would also increase."

Hmm, you’re right. I’ll remove that as well.