Not really interested in a debate. In a discussion last night a libertarian friend of mine mentioned Obama’s comment that health care is a right. He feels that’s completely incorrect.
I remember and old quote that I I agree with in part.
A right is something that doesn’t cost anyone else anything.
Not sure where that came from. I also remember someone on the dope offering an explanation why health care was indeed a right that I thought was insightful and interesting. I did a search and could find it. Does anyone remember what it was, who it was, or does anyone have a source of their own they’d like to offer as to why health care is a right.
If it turns into a debate I don’t have much time to participate. I just want some sources and opinions about the argument that health care is a right.
Using terminology like “right” makes it kind of a loaded question.
Health care is a service like any other provided by the labor and resources of other people. So the question really is what is the minimum level of service we as a society believe people are entitled to and how should we fund it?
Providing health care is a social responsibility that ensures members of the society are able to enjoy the inalienable right to life and the Jeffersonian pursuit of happiness. How much health care should be provide and who bears the cost is determined by just how socialist a society is.
Personally, I’m more okay with my tax contributions going to providing health care to the all who need it than waging war or building roads, but that’s just me. Not to say we don’t need roads or to protect our sovereignty, but what is that for if we collectively are dying prematurely or too sick to appreciate it?
Ought anyone get rich off someone else’s basic health?
It’s often an inevitable byproduct. Over here, with the National Health Service, a GP gets a salary in the region of £100,000 per annum. That’s quite healthy, when all’s said and done. And the NHS has to buy its drugs from the drug companies, and they all make healthy profits.
Even in communist China, healthcare as a “right” has not yet been established.
Conversely, the capitalist UK has established the NHS as part of the minimum standard for all citizens that we as a nation largely agree should be derived from our tax revenues.
As for “A right is something that doesn’t cost anyone else anything” - this is meaningless rhetoric. Your forefathers chose to define your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But those don’t come for free either: your armed forces, and many other parts of your federal and state government, create services and provisions to ensure that you can continue pursuing them. And that costs money, payable by tax revenues.
In my own personal morality, I believe that “happiness” would include healthiness, provided by free-at-delivery, competent healthcare, and think countries that don’t provide it are misguided at best. But cleary the mileage varies.
We don’t have a “Right” to trash being picked up or an army to defend our country or roads to get us across town. It’s not inalienable. It’s not a Constitutional Amendment. There’s nothing in the Bible about it.
But we pay taxes and we pay them willingly, so that we can have all those things inherent in what the world society considers to be damn close to necessary in order to remain productive.
So if you look across the world and look at almost every other civilized nation out there, you’ll see it become apparent that they all consider it necessary to grant ALL its citizens availability to adequate health care.
It’s not about a Right. It’s about a right. As in “right versus wrong” in how a country is run.
You are using the term “right” in the sense of a “positive right,” which is something that the government must provide. In the US, there is very plainly no positive right to health care for all citizens. Whether there should be one is a matter of debate.
Personally, that is how I see it too. Modern healthcare is certainly a wonderful thing to have, but I do not feel that anyone is entitled to receive it from the taxpayers just by existing. There are a lot of things that are nice to have, that make life better, but yet that are not things that we’re all entitled to have taxpayers provide us with.
The problem with healthcare being a “right,” is that it would mean any bum on the street would have a right to healthcare. Assuming a bum on the street doesn’t have any money, it would mean the bum is *entitled *to someone else’s property. Including *your *property.
A right to speak your mind, bear arms, exercise religion, etc. doesn’t require a person to take possession of someone else’s property. A right to healthcare, on the other hand, does. Hence it is not a right.
I think this is fairly settled. If an individual has a positive right to x vis-a-vis a government, then the government must provide x to that individual. If an individual has a negative right with respect to y vis-a-vis a government, then the government cannot unreasonably interfere with the individual with respect to y.
A positive right granted by the U.S. constitution is the right to a speedy trial and the right to the effective assistance of counsel. If a criminal defendant is denied either of these, he may sue to obtain either of these things.
A negative right granted by the U.S. constitution is the right to free speech. If the government unreasonably interferes with an individual’s exercise of his right to free speech, the individual can sue to enjoin it or obtain damages.
The only instances I can think of where anyone has a positive right to health care vis-a-vis the U.S. government is if that person is (i) a federal prisoner, (ii) serving in the armed forces (or a veteran maybe?), or (iii) a U.S. employee that has obtained such right contractually.
Primary school education is a ‘right’ in this country. No one is refused.
We all pay taxes, whether we have children or not, to provide it. Educated children benefit everyone, as do literate citizens.
Certain things should be ‘socialist’ and not for profit, police and fire services, public school education, and, many believe, basic access to affordable health care.
Most people can see how making police and fire services ‘for profit’ would be a fool’s move but still think it’s not a problem for hospitals, clinics and health care.
Danger, Danger, Socialism, be afraid. How simplistic.
I don’t think of it as a “right” because of the connotation of entitlement, but rather an obligation. I feel that if people are going to call themselves civilized they have a duty to help take care of one another to a certain degree. The devil’s in the details, of course.
The right to exercise religion involves not taxing churches (to protect them from unfair government bias) which increases my taxes and takes money from me. Our right to liberty involves funding the armed forces, which takes lots of money from me. Good deals both, but they are not free.
It wouldn’t bother me personally if every church in the country shut down tomorrow, but I don’t mind paying for your nachus. Seeing your bum - who might be there because of mental illness, not laziness, suffer because some people don’t want to give up their precious cash for healthcare bothers me a lot more. YMMV.
You have a right to your property, but someone needs to pay the police to enforce the laws that protect your property.
So, no, there are no rights that “don’t cost anyone else anything”
For me reasonable access to affordable health care falls under the category of things that are “reasonable expectations” in a modern Western country. They are not rights, but they are still important. Gay marriage is another thing that people bandy about as a “right” when it is nothing of the sort. It is however, a reasonable expectation. Abortion falls into this category, although it is currently misclassified as a right due to a poor Supreme Court decision. We have very few actual rights, and that is absolutely correct. Rights are things that are so basic, so fundamental, that if they are denied, it’s worth the full faith and credit of the Federal government to intervene and restore, up to and including military intervention. Does anyone really think that it’s worth going to war so that a woman can kill her unborn child, or so that gay people (or straight people for that matter) can get a piece of paper that says they’re married? Absurd. Health care is the same way.
