Let’s say free basic education was eliminated as a guarantee for Americans. I’m pretty certain we would end up with a stratified system, with some Americans receiving excellent and very expensive schooling, and some Americans not being able to afford school at all. Quality of education would probably begin to vary even more widely than today, with some schools worsening quite a bit, and a few schools getting maaaaaaaaaybe a little bit better – though the losers would surely outnumber the winners. (It isn’t like good schools would become much better for any reason.)
That, I think, is a pretty good analog for our healthcare system as it stands. So, defining a service as something that people are entitled to, with a legal remedy to obtain it (such as how public schools can’t arbitrarily decide that certain children are simply not entitled to go to school), means that the system built up around that guarantee, right, entitlement, or whatever you want to call it, does indeed make a huge difference.
Let’s say free basic education was eliminated as a guarantee for Americans. I’m pretty certain we would end up with a stratified system, with some Americans receiving excellent and very expensive schooling, and some Americans not being able to afford school at all. Quality of education would probably begin to vary even more widely than today, with some schools worsening quite a bit, and a few schools getting maaaaaaaaaybe a little bit better – though the losers would surely outnumber the winners. (It isn’t like good schools would become much better for any reason.)
That, I think, is a pretty good analog for our healthcare system as it stands. So, defining a service as something that people are entitled to, with a legal remedy to obtain it (such as how public schools can’t arbitrarily decide that certain children are simply not entitled to go to school), means that the system built up around that guarantee, right, entitlement, or whatever you want to call it, does indeed make a huge difference.
So to your comment: “Defining health care as a human right isn’t going to automatically reduce health care costs.” Just having a law that states healthcare is a right, and taking no further action, of course does nothing. But that’s a stupid point that nobody is actually arguing. I mean, I can declare myself to be President of the United States and that does nothing, either. I’m at a loss to why you think that simply declaring something makes something change.
The obvious point you’re missing – or intentionally glossing over – is that once healthcare is defined as a right/entitlement/whatever, structural changes in the system must inevitably follow, and THAT change in the system makes things different.
Everyone in the US has a right to a basic education but it is not a natural human right. If I go into to Taco Bell and pay for a taco, I have a right to that taco, but tacos are not a natural human right.
There are different kinds of rights and reframing healthcare into natural human rights is just trying to willfully mislead.
Public employees are not slaves because the services they provide are not natural human rights. If the services provided were natural human rights then they would be slaves because not provided them would be a violation of human rights. That is one way of telling the difference between natural human rights and other types or rights.
Which numbers are you referring to? Medicare in the US is not much cheaper per capita then private insurance per capita, and Medicaid outcomes in the US are worse than on private insurance.
If you don’t think what type of right healthcare is or could be is important, no one is forcing you to participate in a thread about framing what type of right healthcare is.
I think the biggest vein of ore that UHC proponents can mine, beyond the obvious and absolutely necessary “You won’t pay more overall out of pocket” assurances, is that a huge proportion of the overall health care costs are actually going into the pockets of the insurance companies, not to providers or facilities. If they can show something akin to a deadweight loss produced solely by the presence of insurance companies and lack of competition, and then show how single payer UHC could eliminate that and reduce costs, they’d be on to something.
In all of these threads, when a person calls something socialism, the response is typically, “Yeah, but what about roads and police protection?” That argument is a non sequitur in that because we have a handful of government controlled services, there is no limit on what the government should control be that televisions, books, coffee pots, etc. In this argument, the burden should be on that person to argue why health care is sufficiently similar to police forces as to be placed in that category.
Now you have tried to place some reasonable limit on it with your qualifier, but everything you said can be handled through private insurance. We don’t have government control of car crashes, house fires, and early deaths, all of which meet your criteria. We have private companies that insure against these unknowns, just like we do with health. Why is health sufficiently different than these other unknowns that requires government intervention?
The argument that health care is a right is simply a bald declaration. What is the source of this right? It is not from any legal text. It is not from any religious teaching. Sure Jesus said to help the poor, but that is 180 degrees from the poor having an enforceable right to be helped.
The assertion simply leads to enforced socialism or even communism. A right to health care means that if you cannot afford it, you get to dip into my pocket to pay for it. And if you have a right to dip into my pocket, then I do not have a property right to my money, others do. It is then pretty easy to see that a right to health care means that all community resources are pooled to meet the needs of others, which is socialism.
This is not like a social welfare system where a societal choice has been made; this would be a moral right to demand social welfare and socialism.
This is pretty easy to answer – it should be placed in that category because the current American system sucks for millions, and many other countries have better systems with various levels of government control and involvement. We should do what works – and certain types of government health care work much, much better than our current shitty system.
The government already has “a right to dip into my pocket”.
Sure, if you consider 3.3% to be a huge proportion (cite - pdf). Although you are correct - “things will cost less if nobody makes a profit” is an argument that socialism uses.
Although I think you will have trouble arguing that a government takeover of healthcare is a way to address lack of competition.
And most of the savings under M4A, for instance, come from cuts in payments to providers and facilities (and drug companies). Whether defining health care as a basic human right will make those kinds of major spending cuts more or less likely is not clear.
Not only natural disaster, all sorts of disaster. Every emergency room in every hospital has to triage all day every day. There is usually a shortage of doctors in hospitals.
There may not be enough doctors of some specialty (especially certain oncology specialists) to service the population of some area.
There may not be enough physicians at all, maybe due to “brain drain” (well educated people moving away). The VA, the major example of government run healthcare, routinely sends patients to my office because they don’t have any doctors of our specialty within a reasonable distance.
There may be a shortage of medical supplies, not necessarily due to natural disaster, but due to corruption or waste or war.
The problem isn’t that a country might run out of healthcare, it is that a community might have insufficient healthcare to cover their basic need.
Maybe if we had less government involvement it would work better? The United States is not Sweden or even Canada. Saying that it works in those countries doesn’t necessarily mean it will work here. If we eliminated third party payers and had transparent pricing, that could take care of many of the issues we have.
The government does, but you (the general you) do not. If the government through its sovereign power wants to set up a social program to provide for the less fortunate, then it may do so, just as it may repeal that program tomorrow.
Declaring health care to be a right means that you (the general you) have a property interest in my money that is enforceable at law such that it cannot be taken away by statute.
Our current pass the buck system is inefficient because pass the buck provides no societal value. I get that providers and insurance companies are competing to get paid the most while providing the least service. It is their job. It just doesn’t do the rest of us any good.
Private health insurance doesn’t work because the companies are going to compete to not pay claims. To dump me, their client, as soon as they get a whiff of me being unprofitable. The best companies are going to be the most ruthless and opaque in this regard. Make the company look good while actually being bad to their clients.
As far as why this does not happen in other insurance industries, well in other industries people can walk away. Car insurance too expensive, get a cab, bus, chauffeur. Or find a better car insurance company. Most other insurances are based on property, and property has fixed economic value. People are not going to spend their last dime on a house or car. They will with their lives, because they can’t take it with them. Of course, most can’t afford to spend everything because what if the particular treatment doesn’t work and they need another. So they scrimp on treatment and sometimes die because they guessed wrong.
Group insurance works great with the elderly. Otherwise it is through work, a system that will break down eventually because companies want to compete to not provide benefits. Also ties people to jobs that they are only keeping for healthcare, which is inefficient. Tying healthcare to a particular job is an irrational system, but since group insurance is the only type that works for the client, it’s the best we can do for certain people.
None of this really has to do with natural rights. It has to do with right of assembly and right to regulate commerce. And because we are not libertopia and property right is not a right free from regulation.
If we’d not come up with Medicare, we’d probably have single payer now because the need would be too obvious to deny. Again, it’s irrational that I “deserve” to be enrolled in a better health care system simply due to my age. I may need health care at any point in my life. I will hopefully be elderly one day, I won’t be any more deserving then than I am now. But the seniors were separated and various factions use scare tactics to keep the current system because it’s profitable for some.
In this instance, sure – the ends (good healthcare for all) certainly justify the means of more government control and involvement in the healthcare industry. The ends don’t always justify the means, but they certainly do in this case.