Current Events > so why don't you believe that healthcare is a right

(+) Yeah! (+)

tl;dr

poor people need help and we should help them vs. if you don't work you don't deserve anything
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iHuman posted...

tl;dr

poor people need help and we should help them vs. if you don't work you don't deserve anything

pretty much
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Asherlee10 posted...

Has anyone brought up the notion that healthcare doesn't have to be an actual right in order for us to have universal healthcare?

I mean, I can get behind this initially, but I strongly believe that it will have to be seen as a right in order to ensure everyone has it.
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Asherlee10 posted...

asagi_mode_gone posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

What's the tl;dr of the topic right now?

One side: *tosses feces around, muh money*
Other side: *lacks eloquence but makes good points*
And side that doesn't actually care either way: *tosses feces around to enrage the two arguing sides*

Thank you, however is there a more meaningful tl;dr?

I'd like to join the discussion, but there's a lot of it already.

See post 148 for an example of a non-cartoon version of the opposing side. Also, if you Ctrl F Mises youll find a useful link the explains why high healthcare costs in the US are the governments fault.
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people only deserve 3 rights

life
liberty
pursuit of happiness

i actually think pursuit of happiness should be amended, liberty should cover that

so really people only deserve 2 rights, life and liberty and that is all the government should protect

now if you want to gather a bunch of people and start your own health care system i'd be all for it
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iHuman posted...

people only deserve 3 rights

life
liberty
pursuit of happiness

i actually think pursuit of happiness should be amended, liberty should cover that

so really people only deserve 2 rights, life and liberty and that is all the government should protect

now if you want to gather a bunch of people and start your own health care system i'd be all for it

shouldn't health be part of the right to life?
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Asherlee10 posted...

Maybe, maybe not. Would it technically be a right if there was strong policy backing it up?

For some reason healthcare as a service being a right isn't sitting well with me, it's almost like it degrades other rights or something. I'm not sure yet.

For me, it shouldn't be "Health Care", but "Health Insurance" and it should be a Federal Government run "NON-PROFIT" National Health Insurance that is treated like a utility for people to get Health Care access and cover for them when things get bad.

That's the way I see it.

We should do away with all the other "For Profit Health Insurance" providers and just let the Government have sole leverage over Big Pharama & the Hospitals to drive the costs down like Medicaid / Medicare.
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tennisdude818 posted...

DarthGravid posted...

Addendum - No one is pointing any guns, either. Utter nonsense.

Actually you are ignoring the gun in the room. When the government collects money, it does so with the implicit threat that if you say no long enough, you will eventually see that gun. You can try to argue that the ends justify the means in this case, but dont try to vault over the uncomfortable reality of those means.

In this topic I have argued that a more effective and moral way to deliver healthcare is through voluntary exchange / the free market. You clearly arent convinced, but you should examine the implications of deficit financing more closely. This isnt just about a couple dollars of my paycheck being forcibly removed from my family and given to other families. This is inter generational theft from future generations through government debt. They will need healthcare too, but they will be saddled with debt from past generations that wanted big government but didnt want to pay for it themselves. That is taxation without representation. We claim to care about future generations when climate change comes up, but we never care enough to sacrifice big government programs that will implode at this rate.

I do not disagree with this completely. The ACA was a great idea on paper, but unsustainable. It can be fixed. But there is a need for some kind of universal health care.

I made the point earlier that healthy people are at work, paying taxes. More healthy people, more working people, more tax revenue. Healthy people live longer, and in better condition, therefore the retirement age could be raised, more people paying taxes, for longer, which means more revenue. Yes, it will be a loss for a while, but eventually it could turn into gains, if managed properly.

This doesn't even consider preventative care. Catch something early, that could save hundreds of thousands later. Cancer is easier and cheaper to beat at Stage 1 than Stage 3. Someone develops high cholesterol at 30, manage it then, it's much less likely to be a massive heart attack at 55. This seems like common sense.
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joestarrr posted...

shouldn't health be part of the right to life?

Yes but that doesn't include healthcare. If you can prove someone got you sick then they should have to pay for your healthcare though. But if you just got unlucky and got the flu, it shouldn't be a right that you get healthcare.
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Healthcare is a right per se, like medical professionals cant refuse to treat you because that would be unethical and a violation of their Hippocratic oath. Health insurance, however, is a luxury because it is technically not necessary to receive healthcare. What the ACA did was to make health insurance necessary to avoid a penalty on taxes. It didnt cap healthcare costs or insurance premiums. Unfortunately, after the tax subsidies ran out, many of the newly insured lost the ability to pay the premiums, which resulted in millions of premiums being raised 100% to accommodate the free loaders.
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DarthGravid posted...

tennisdude818 posted...

DarthGravid posted...

Addendum - No one is pointing any guns, either. Utter nonsense.

Actually you are ignoring the gun in the room. When the government collects money, it does so with the implicit threat that if you say no long enough, you will eventually see that gun. You can try to argue that the ends justify the means in this case, but dont try to vault over the uncomfortable reality of those means.

In this topic I have argued that a more effective and moral way to deliver healthcare is through voluntary exchange / the free market. You clearly arent convinced, but you should examine the implications of deficit financing more closely. This isnt just about a couple dollars of my paycheck being forcibly removed from my family and given to other families. This is inter generational theft from future generations through government debt. They will need healthcare too, but they will be saddled with debt from past generations that wanted big government but didnt want to pay for it themselves. That is taxation without representation. We claim to care about future generations when climate change comes up, but we never care enough to sacrifice big government programs that will implode at this rate.

I do not disagree with this completely. The ACA was a great idea on paper, but unsustainable. It can be fixed. But there is a need for some kind of universal health care.

I made the point earlier that healthy people are at work, paying taxes. More healthy people, more working people, more tax revenue. Healthy people live longer, and in better condition, therefore the retirement age could be raised, more people paying taxes, for longer, which means more revenue. Yes, it will be a loss for a while, but eventually it could turn into gains, if managed properly.

This doesn't even consider preventative care. Catch something early, that could save hundreds of thousands later. Cancer is easier and cheaper to beat at Stage 1 than Stage 3. Someone develops high cholesterol at 30, manage it then, it's much less likely to be a massive heart attack at 55. This seems like common sense.

We both want the same thing, but I want to leave it to the private sector. Its obvious why this is a touchy subject. Most people agree that we ought to leave car, cell phone, shoe, etc production to the private sector, but many on the left think that healthcare is too important to trust with the private sector. And if youre convinced that the US had a free market in healthcare before the ACA (it didnt), then you can point to countless examples of perceived market failure. So I do sympathize with your case and your perspective. But the US government doesnt manage anything well. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid all rely on IOUs. Its the political path of least resistance to print and borrow rather than to tax.

I think Japan is a relevant example for my point. They have UHC and they have generous retirement benefits. Its a culture that voluntarily cares about its elderly, but they decided to make it mandatory at the government level. Now if you look at their debt to GDP and where its headed, they are fucked. They probably would have been fine taking care of their elderly in the private sector, but they wanted that government guarantee and now its guaranteed to fail.
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Asherlee10 posted...

Has anyone brought up the notion that healthcare doesn't have to be an actual right in order for us to have universal healthcare?

So I made this post on the front page that wasn't ever addressed that I think touches on your point here:
s0nicfan posted...

First off let me begin by saying that I want everyone to have access to healthcare and I think the current healthcare system is critically flawed and far too expensive.

BUT, it isn't a right. That's because rights are supposed to be permanent "inalienable" things. A right to free speech means I have it forever. A right to assembly means I have it forever. A right to a jury of peers means I have that forever. The problem with healthcare as a right is that health has a unique personal responsibility angle to it. If I decide to do nothing but eat garbage, never exercise, balloon out to 300lbs.. that can negatively impact access and cost to healthcare of others... directly negatively impacting their "right" to healthcare through increases in taxes, fees, organ donor wait lists, er wait times, etc. If healthcare is a right, that means I hold no responsibility for those actions, because no matter what I do you can't take my right away.

There are things that people deserve access to, but aren't rights, simply because we need to reserve the ability to revoke something from someone abusing it. Healthcare is one such thing. The moment we make it a right, we acknowledge that personal responsibility no longer applies to it, and no matter what someone does we have to give them full access to it, forever.

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Privatized nonprofit Healthcare seems to be the most effective model for sure.

There's also a very interesting discussion to be had about what making Healthcare a right would do to a doctor's ability to make judgement calls. Right now, higher priority cases coming into an emergency room gets bumped to the front of the line because doctors have the ability to make calls about what is the most effective use of their time. If it were a right, because rights have extremely stringent rules about infringing them, I don't know if a doctor would still have that ability, or whether they would have to do first come first served. This gets even more complicated when you talk about organ donors, and whether right to Health Care applies to finite resources like that. Right now, a chain smoker can be denied a lung because of their lifestyle choices, but if it were a right I don't know that you could deny them. The result would be technical fairness in access to organs, but a very interesting moral dilemma because people who need one because of their own bad decisions would be potentially causing the deaths of people who were in unfortunate circumstances just due to limited availability.
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Asherlee10 posted...

Our society, as a whole, benefits from having its population healthy.

Indeed. However, people need to be proactive instead of reactive.

Most obese people are way beyond the point of healthy and when treatment kicks in, they've already gone down a path too deep. Any kind of treatment is just maintenance and 95% of them goes back to what is comfortable... keep eating.

A real healthy society proactively keep themselves healthy by getting enough daily walks and eating enough healthy food (in moderate doses). Asking society to fix the problem of 35% of the population because they lack self discipline is completely unacceptable. People need to stop overeating instead of demanding free healthcare.
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I hate topics that are phrased this way. I think everyone should have access to healthcare, but it's like a worm came into this apple and I went to take a bite.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

The question about whether or not healthcare should be a right isn't even the right question to ask.

Consider this example: Most people don't think about whether or not having a smartphone should be a right. Most people can just go and buy one because the costs are so low for what you can buy.

So the real question we should ask is "how can we reduce the cost of healthcare." And there are a few strategies there:

1) Encourage automation in healthcare, from the manufacturing of medicine to the administration of care to diagnoses.

2) Encourage a healthier population. 30% of our yearly medical costs are going towards treating obesity and smoking related illnesses. Illnesses that shouldn't even exist. If we eliminated these things, our spending would be 30% leaner (probably even more) which would enable us to streamline the entire healthcare system.

3) Introduce competition into the healthcare marketplace. Price setting and price capping don't work in the long run because of the inefficiencies they introduce. The most effective solution for high prices is to encourage competition and innovation, and the government is uniquely positioned to do that in the same way that it rewarded SpaceX with massive grants.

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You only have the rights you fight for.

If Americans aren't willing to fight to have a right to healthcare, then they don't have it.
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tote_all posted...

Lmao, is this true? Can you confirm this is what you believe, @darkjedilink

he won't. he has too much pride to admit it

Healthcare is already a right in the US. It's just not an entitlement.