Who is saying that the right to housing means the right to a house? Perhaps it is just the right to a place to sleep at night if you cannot afford one? Is the right to not have to sleep in the park so obnoxious?
If you say that everyone should have enough food to live, then you do believe that food is a right. This does not imply that everyone gets lobster every night. The right to free speech does not involve buying everyone a newspaper to publish. It really all boils down to the right to life. Do you agree that no one should be allowed to die of starvation or exposure due to a lack of money. If you buy that, then why should people be allowed to die from a disease or injury due to lack of money?
Odd how many seem to think that a fetus has a right to life, but the mother? Screw her, let her die of complications if she can’t afford care.
If you want to stick with the “right to housing” example, consider the fact that right now mortgage interest is tax deductible. Which to me means that the government is subsidizing the purchase of my house, to the tune of several hundred dollars per month. There is a very real cost under the current system. So for a conservative to argue against a “universal housing” system because it would cost several hundred a month, requires that they completely ignore the cost of the current system.
Okay, to really dumb it down enough: consider you’re out for dinner and you order chocolate icecream, and someone says, “you should order chocolate cake.”
To say, “I don’t want chocolate cake because it has chocolate in it” would be the dumbest argument you could come up with. Likewise, there is egg, sugar, and milk product it both desserts as well.
When I hear an argument like that made, all I can think is, "my god, that poor guy, he’s been lied to his whole life to the point he honestly believes chocolate icecream doesn’t have chocolate in it.
There are very real and legitimate arguments to be made, like an allergy to gluten, that could be made but aren’t.
So to rephrase the OP, it is a myth to think that chocolate icecream doesn’t contain chocolate, and it is stupid to stay you don’t want chocolate cake because it has chocolate in it, when you are currently eating chocolate.
Do you play Monopoly? I did a lot, as a kid. Most of my friends had this asinine rule about Free Parking. All the money the Bank collected through fines and penalties from Chance and Community Chest actions, and sometimes even the money the Bank collected by selling property and/or houses, ended up in the middle of the board, and a person who landed on Free Parking won it all. This despite the fact that the printed rules said, very clearly, that Free Parking was simply a resting place that entitled the player to no rewards of any kind.
So I would enforce that rule at my house, and argue vigorously for it when playing at someone else’s house. But ultimately, the person who hosted the game made the decision – “house rules.” So more than a few times, I played a game of Monopoly with the “Free Parking Lottery” rule in effect.
Do you suppose I refused the Free Parking money if I landed on it? Do you suppose that accepting it made me a hypocrite?
Of course not. Because there is a difference between arguing for the best course for a society to take, and participating in that society’s actual rules. Free Parking Lottery was a terrible rule. But if it was decided that the rule was in effect, then naturally it would be foolish not to use it.
You are free to make that case, and I encourage to you to do so. But it has nothing to do with UHC, and it has nothing to do with paying for other people’s health costs.
I would also like to point out, that even IF it caused an upward pressure, you say that as if there are no upward pressures on the current system. Why is it, that without UHC health care costs in the US continue to rise? Or do you argue that they are going down? Do you believe that in the current system there is a downward pressure on health care costs?
Two mistakes, if you did not have health insurance, you probably would have gotten the MRIs and then had to declare bankruptcy. Did you know that over 50% of bankruptcies in the US are the result of medical costs? And without insurance you would have learned that the nerve was infected and had to forgo treatment until you ended up in the ER. Or, you would have had to stop working because you couldn’t get treated. Each of those points has a cost that you are currently incurring but chose to ignore.
The other mistake is thinking that with UHC people just run into the MRI room and demand their $20 worth. Why do you think that? Where did you get that idea?
Further to that, does your current insurance allow you to do that? What stops you from getting treatment now?
You can demand what ever you want. I have the right to free speech so I demand you buy me a newspaper. I can go down and demand I get an op-ed published on the front page. How is that going to work out for me?
Or wait, the doctor can make an informed decision that you don’t need an MRI and tell you that.
In the real world of UHC, you can demand an MRI and the hospital staff will politely put you on the bottom of the list. And after the people that actually need an MRI get theirs you can have yours.
But all this is besides the point. Right now, your group plan means that the people in your group have the right to demand all the MRIs they can get, and you’re on the hook. Your premiums will go up next year just like mine did each of the last four years. Under the current system, there is an upward pressure on costs, starting with the desire to make profit. The hospitals, under the current system, have no reason NOT to put in the lastest and greatest MRIs because they can pass the cost off to you, the group plan member.
It’s like saying we should all pay for everyones gasoline because it’s already baked into everything we buy. If you buy postage stamps, you’re buying gasoline for postal delivery trucks. If you pay for schooling, you’re paying for the gasoline that goes into school buses and the gasoline that gets teachers’ cars to the classroom. If you’re buying a bag of apples, you’re paying for the gasoline to transport the crops from the field to the supermarket.
With everything I pay money for, it indirectly pays for health insurance, gasoline, water, silicon, electricity, sheet metal, diet Pepsi, sex, drugs, rock & roll, etc, etc.
Your argument covers any and all products and services therefore it’s an argument with no substance. It offers zero insights into the problem.
There is a meme that meme means something often said but not true.
But I hear “health care is a right” all the time from people on the left, often on this MB. So it may be a “meme”, but it’s also true, if not universally so.
Your meme aside, the health care that the military, Federal and State employees have is part of their salary. In the case of Federal and State employees it is private insurance.
Beyond that, we really don’t need to be lectured by someone from a country that spends 1/4 of what we spend in GNP on the military unless you wish to pony up your share of NATO. I would think the Queen would at least ask the same GDP contribution from you as the UK which is double what you’re paying now. In effect, the United States is subsidizing your health care system.
So unless you want to pay your share of the load you have no financial basis from which to lecture others.
So, do those who object to health care being a right object to the laws which require ERs to take everyone whether or not they can pay? That is the most basic implementation of the right in the US. Given that, which leads to extremely expensive and inefficient care, we seem to have the choice of making things better or letting them die. Or keeping the status quo, for those who think this is the best of all possible systems because it is in the Good Ole US of A.
Let me get this right Magiver… You are of the opinion that because the US spends a huge amount of money each year on things like invading and occupying Iraq, and on nuclear weapons and the means to deploy them around the world…
That this can be construed as a direct subsidy to the a Canadian citizen’s healthcare. Because we don’t “have to” spend extra money on the necessary tasks of invading countries or defending against cold war enemies that no longer exist.
No. I don’t speak for Magiver, but if you gave his paragraph to 50 students and asked them for neutral, honest summaries, not one would come up with this screed. I am confident that’s not what he sought to convey.
And I’m confident you know it.
For fun, why don’t you try to honestly summarize his statement, and then rebut it?
Not at all. What I said was that another upward pressure is something we do not need.
Most of the health care inflation is driven by increased technology. We have things like MRIs and CAT scanners and drugs that weren’t availbale even twenty years ago. Much of the rest of it is an aging US population. Much of the rest of that is things like obesity and other lifestyle related issues. A large part of that is that we spend a lot more on those at the beginning and end of their lives. We treat low birth weight newborns that might be classed as stillbirths in other countries.
No, there is not, but we desperately need one. That is a major flaw in Obama care - it does nothing to address the causes of health care inflation.
No, I would have gone without, as I did when I was without insurance.
Yes, I did. Did you know that the majority of those had health insurance?
Nothing - that’s the point. That’s why I got the MRIs and CAT scans.
It depends on how the right is defined. If it is defined as an active right, the newspaper has an obligation to supply it. If health care is defined as an active right, health care providers have an obligation to supply it.
And this will not change under UHC. Hospitals have no reason to deny people MRIs, because they will always get paid. They can always pass the cost along to me, the taxpayer.
Magiver’s position relies on the notion that most or all of american military spending is being spent on causes contributary to Canadian welfare. If not, then the fact american spends so much isn’t doing jack to prop up a (possibly imaginary) shortage of Canadian military spending.
