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Is healthcare a right?

Acerac

Acerac

Banned
WaterAstro said:
Yes, I look down on anyone who thinks open carry policy is a good thing, especially if they rather have that over healthcare for dying people.
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You have a very confused viewpoint of America and the people who reside within. They are not in fact a hivemind who believes whatever stereotypes you have dressed up for yourself.

Unless you were asking if any Americans would do this thing? I'm pretty confident you could find 2 people of most nationalities who would prefer the ability to open carry over the right for universal healthcare.
 
L

Loki

Count of Concision
In my opinion, no one has a "right" to another person's labor, so no, it shouldn't be a "right." However, I firmly believe in ensuring that healthcare is accessible and affordable for everyone within their means, and we are certainly wealthy enough as a society in the aggregate to make that happen.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
It's not legally a right, but it definitely should be, and I'm honestly surprised it's not. Getting sick is not a personal choice or decision. People can't choose to not have cancer, polio, or degenerative brain disease, and nobody should have to face the possibility of either going bankrupt or dying cause they can't pay for health care.
 
F

Foffy

Banned
Cocaloch said:
Libertarians are making an argument from the Lockean misconception of the state of nature. There was no state of nature. It was a philosophical fiction used for an argument.

I think libertarianism is probably the least well thought out and, excuse my frankness, most adolescent political philosophy but I think you're being a bit unfair. Many libertarians I know are hardly privileged, and the system in internally consistent. It's just based on particularly bad premises and is simple enough to be attractive to people that don't think all that much about these sorts of matters.
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Perhaps my aversion to Libertarianism is because a lot of people I converse with who hold those values are deep, deep fans of intellectual midget Stefan Molyneux. He seems traditionally Libertarian and not a potential reasonable mix like Penn Jillette is.
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Yes, and most of the industrialized world has figured that out to have atlleast basic health care free of charge for most if not all citizens.

Its only America that is aghast at the notion, and that's only because there are multi trillion dollar industries propped up on profiting off of people's lives.

And that's just the insurance industry, to say nothing of the absolute disaster the pharmaceutical industry has been to consumers compared to other nations
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
WiiredShawn said:
Yes. And it's not a hard argument to win, honestly.

Replace "healthcare" with "roads."

We have roads. They're useful. They're a public good. Very few people "worked" for those roads. But we nonetheless expect those roads to exist, because those roads provide people with opportunities. So we imbue our government with the responsibility of creating and maintaining our roads. We pay taxes in order to diffuse the overall cost of doing that work.

Inevitably, there will be people who use roads wastefully or dangerously. The presence of roads means that someone will drive drunk on them and potentially hurt or kill others.

That inevitability doesn't make us say "Let's get rid of roads." Instead, it invites us to deal with those accompanying issues in other ways. But the public good remains for all to use because that's fundamentally better for everyone.

Whether it's a "right" or not is more of a rhetorical question to me - claiming "rights" is a way to shortcut a larger argument about authority and need. But we have the resources to transform healthcare into a public good, just like roads, and we should.
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The problem with this analogy is that roads are naturally occurring phenomena to many conservatives. They're created by volcanoes.
 
T

TaterTots

Banned
I spend a ton of money out of each paycheck for health insurance. If someone can come to me and tell me a plan that would be cheaper for myself and everyone else would be guaranteed healthcare...bet your ass I'd agree. I haven't seen it yet. Also, yes, that means I'm putting myself and my family first.

EDIT; I believe it is a right, but how do we make it affordable for everyone?
 
G

Glass Shark

Banned
DonMigs85 said:
What if a person was a heavy drinker or smoker or got themselves morbidly obese? Should they be penalized?
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No. As soon as we start moralizing and itemizing based on which health issues we deem acceptable, the whole system has failed. Even murderers and rapists deserve healthcare, are we suggesting that smoking is a greater sin than either of those?
 
F

fleck0

Member
I think it should be, but we have two political parties - one wants people to have basic rights and the other wants to kill people so....
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
Let's be real, the reason we don't have UHC is the same reason social welfare is constantly under attack of being gutted.

Racism.

That's the beginning and end of it.
 
W

Wvrs

Member
I believe it is. I'm British and I've spent time living in other countries; none had health care systems as vicious as the US', but I definitely felt more stressed whenever I fell ill then I do in the UK.

I love that I can go to my GP, or a hospital with any issues and it's all totally covered, no need to worry about insurance or anything else. And I'm generally a pretty healthy person, but all the same I would happily pay more taxes to keep the NHS going. It makes me feel like I'm part of a society that wouldn't just kick me to the curb should I find myself in a difficult situation.
 
C

Crispy75

Member
TaterTots said:
I spend a ton of money out of each paycheck for health insurance. If someone can come to me and tell me a plan that would be cheaper for myself and everyone else would be guaranteed healthcare...bet your ass I'd agree. I haven't seen it yet.
Click to expand...

Pretty much every other industrialised nation has a better system than yours. Take your pick.
 
Stiler

Stiler

Member
It should be.

No one should be denied life saving care because they aren't rich. The fact that some people in society think you should just let people die or make them completely broke and unable to ever live a decent life after blowing through their entire savings just makes me hold my head in shame.


The main issue with healthcare are the drastically overpricing schemes and the corruption of people lining their pockets.
 
MidgarBlowedUp

MidgarBlowedUp

Member
I think, per constitution, it can be made a right by each state. So, the American people have the power to elect officials that can make it a basic right within each state.

It's also common sense in this day and age, but we have people running the country that don't have much of that.
 
T

Timedog

good credit (by proxy)
I wonder if Jesus would rather a bunch of people die and suffer so that the rich can accumulate enough funds to finally R&D teleporters powerful enough to send a human through the eye of a needle.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Yes, it is a right.

The reason the Constitution doesn't say anything about it is because modern medicine would not exist for 100 years, minimum, after it was written. It was only written to assure or dole out rights they knew of at the time.
 
S

Snkfanatic

Banned
It's sad that this is even a topic of discussion let alone a debate. We should all have the same chances of living regardless of how much fucking money is in your bank account.
 
F

Fudgepuppy

Banned
Yes.

It's not only morally correct, but also economically beneficial.

How can you expect to have a strong country and economy, if no one can afford education or healthcare?
 
X

Xyphie

Member
Eylos said:
If demand for food an water IS not infinite by this definition, neither IS healthcare, You dont Go to the doctor and to the hospital every day (unless You are Very sick) or take infinite drugs.
Click to expand...

If you could have infinite doctors caring about your health you would. If you could have infinite R&D money spent on your one in a million rare disease you would.

ChryZ said:
There are plenty of developed countries with universal healthcare, which makes it being a right a factual possibility.
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mantidor said:
Healthcare is a service, not a supply/demand thing. Most people will never need 1 trillion dollars of "healthcare", governments should be able to stablish a system that allows access to healthcare for anyone at any time, because this is something that is not needed for everyone, all the time at the same time, unlike food/water.

But seriously this argument of "it's too expensive!" falls apart when there are countries with a smaller GDP per capita than the US and they are perfectly capable of making it work.
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Every country with universal healthcare provides it as a service on a best-effort basis not as a universal right.

My point is that access to healthcare can't and shouldn't be a right, even under a universal healthcare scheme. Because governments can't and shouldn't provide individuals with the infinite healthcare they want. You see this exercised in reality all the time with governments denying coverage to very expensive life-saving treatments like Alexion's Soliris (+$500k/year for a lifetime) as an example. To make rational public policy decisions you, unfortunately, have to put prices on peoples' lives.
 
J

JustenP88

I earned 100 Gamerscore™ for collecting 300 widgets and thereby created Trump's America
Yes. There's no free market in health care. That's impossible. It's a dumb fucking concept. Insurance, as a business model, is just socialism for the profit of the few. It's mind-numbingly stupid for American conservatives to still actually think that we're not going to catch up to the rest of the developed world on this.

It's fucking evil too. If this country hadn't lost its sense of legitimate moral outrage, politicians who are opposing progress (or fighting for regress, clearly prompted by lobbyist funding) on this front wouldn't be at all comfortable showing their faces in public. We're getting there.
 
F

Fluffernutter Pancake

Member
This thread is bonkers ---- we've got people

- talking about sky-is-the-limit healthcare being as easily renewable & easily supplied as basic food/water

- making equivalencies between basic infrastructure such as roads/bridges etc. with healthcare (i.e. extremely highly trained physicians, extremely fine-tuned/calibrated/manufactured specialized equipment, extremely sanitized & specialized facilities etc.)

- saying that if you don't agree with them that skies-the-limit healthcare for all is a right, a necessity and something that government must provide, then you must be a racist

etc. etc.

Anyone who has these sort of opinions needs to get to know some real people in the medical field. Talk to them. If you're able to see the amount of rigor & sacrifice that they go through during training, then that will be even better towards checking your opinion on this matter. Ask them about the actual costs of their services, how much power it takes to run certain machines, how many hours of time it takes to analyze results etc.

Think realistically here. Universal healthcare for all. "Why should anyone die from a treatable disease?" Let's just treat everyone! Cancer meds as ubiquitous as water! Highly trained specialists available round the clock at every corner! No malpractice that will ever need to be paid out! MRI machines that run on free power!

Come on, people --- I'd love to live in a world where no matter what I did during the day, I could have whatever I want to eat, drink etc. whenever I want, and to get treated for any illness in a timely manner in an amazing & thorough way whenever I want, to have a great roof over my head with no thought of maintenance or wear & tear, and with guaranteed income to spend on whatever I want. We have a finite Earth here with finite resources & ever-expanding people scrambling for resources. Until someone breaks the laws of physics and is able to create perpetual motion/limitless energy/"something-from nothing" etc., this is an impossible pipe dream.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Thank God for the NHS, if it weren't for them I'd have been fucked on several occasions during my life.
 
S

shiyrley

Banned
Fluffernutter Pancake said:
This thread is bonkers ---- we've got people

- talking about sky-is-the-limit healthcare being as easily renewable & easily supplied as basic food/water

- making equivalencies between basic infrastructure such as roads/bridges etc. with healthcare (i.e. extremely highly trained physicians, extremely fine-tuned/calibrated/manufactured specialized equipment, extremely sanitized & specialized facilities etc.)

- saying that if you don't agree with them that skies-the-limit healthcare for all is a right, a necessity and something that government must provide, then you must be a racist

etc. etc.

Anyone who has these sort of opinions needs to get to know some real people in the medical field. Talk to them. If you're able to see the amount of rigor & sacrifice that they go through during training, then that will be even better towards checking your opinion on this matter.

Think realistically here. Universal healthcare for all. "Why should anyone die from a treatable disease?" Let's just treat everyone! Cancer meds as ubiquitous as water! Highly trained specialists available round the clock at every corner! No malpractice that will ever need to be paid out! MRI machines that run on free power!

Come on, people --- I'd love to live in a world where no matter what I did during the day, I could have whatever I want to eat, drink etc. whenever I want, and to get treated for any illness in a timely manner in an amazing & thorough way whenever I want, to have a great roof over my head with no thought of maintenance or wear & tear, and with guaranteed income to spend on whatever I want. We have a finite Earth here with finite resources & ever-expanding people scrambling for resources. Until someone breaks the laws of physics and is able to create perpetual motion/limitless energy/"something-from nothing" etc., this is an impossible pipe dream.
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yet this "impossible pipe dream" is happening in my country and many other countries less rich than the US, right now

🤔

also you're talking as if free healthcare means doctors don't get paid.
 
F

Fluffernutter Pancake

Member
shiyrley said:
yet this "impossible pipe dream" is happening in my country and many other countries less rich than the US, right now

��

also you're talking as if free healthcare means doctors don't get paid.
Click to expand...

QED, right? So everyone in your country gets treated for any disease humanity has the capacity to treat in a nice, timely manner?

*receipts.gif*

- how big is your country
- how does the extent of treatment available stack up to those available in the US? How is the medical research in your country?

etc.

If you can convince me that such a system can maintain the highest quality care & highest level of medical research progress as we have now while treating a population size of the US or larger and enabling such a population (350+ million) access to any and all of the latest & greatest treatments, highly-trained specialists, state-of-the-art treatment facilities etc. in a timely manner, then I will be onboard with you
 
S

Saganator

Member
Yes, to me, healthcare is included under "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as an unalienable right declared in the Declaration of Independence.
 
V

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
shiyrley said:
yet this "impossible pipe dream" is happening in my country and many other countries less rich than the US, right now

🤔

also you're talking as if free healthcare means doctors don't get paid.
Click to expand...

It's not though. You aren't getting unlimited healthcare in your country. Nobody is.

Part of this is all semantics in this thread.
 
C

ClosingADoor

Member
JustenP88 said:
Yes. There's no free market in health care. That's impossible. It's a dumb fucking concept. Insurance, as a business model, is just socialism for the profit of the few. It's mind-numbingly stupid for American conservatives to still actually think that we're not going to catch up to the rest of the developed world on this.

It's fucking evil too. If this country hadn't lost its sense of legitimate moral outrage, politicians who are opposing progress (or fighting for regress, clearly prompted by lobbyist funding) on this front wouldn't be at all comfortable showing their faces in public. We're getting there.
Click to expand...
Insurance is fine. But with healthcare you want to attach some laws to these companies. Like over here, the government decides which treatments should fall under the basic package everyone is required to have. So the insurance companies can't go "we don't cover that." Also, insurance companies in the health sector are forbidden to pay out profits to shareholders. So this way you get the advantages of companies competing - and lowering prices - but still being required to use their money in the company itself and on things the government decides.

shiyrley said:
yet this "impossible pipe dream" is happening in my country and many other countries less rich than the US, right now

��

also you're talking as if free healthcare means doctors don't get paid.
Click to expand...
Most countries do have some limits though. You are not getting the multimillion euro treatment under your basic insurance package in Europe. It's a balance between giving the most people care and keeping it affordable for society as a whole, as it should be.
 
S

shiyrley

Banned
Fluffernutter Pancake said:
QED, right? So everyone in your country gets treated for any disease humanity has the capacity to treat in a nice, timely manner?

*receipts.gif*

- how big is your country
- how does the extent of treatment available stack up to those available in the US? How is the medical research in your country?

etc.

If you can convince me that such a system can maintain the highest quality care & highest level of medical research progress as we have now while treating a population size of the US or larger and enabling such a population (350+ million) access to any and all of the latest & greatest treatments in a timely manner, then I will be onboard with you
Click to expand...
Did you read my earlier post on tthis thread?

I live in the Canary Islands, which is part of Spain. I got cancer in my left eye. Surgery couldn't be done inside the Canary Islands since there are only three hospitals in the entire country that were specialised on my specific type of cancer, and they are in the mainland.

I got all the required tests here in the island, for free of course, in a timely manner. Then the government paid for me and my mother a flight to Madrid and the AVE to Valladolid, where the hospital is, ALL EXPENSES INCLUDED (Food, stay, etc) , to get the final checks there, talk to the doctors, and set a date, then back to Tenerife. Then before the set date, the same thing, free flight for me and my mother, with free stay, free food, free everything. Well, actually, you pay the food and stay expenses yourself, then show the receipts when you come back, and they reimburse it. The only thing they directly pay upfront are the flights., But the point is they pay for it. We ended up spending exactly zero €. We were almost a month in Valladolid. Everything was free.

And you know what? I need to get checks in Valladolid periodically. These are free too. Fllights + expenses paid. The only difference is they don't pay for a partner's flight or expenses anymore, only me.

For anyone curious, the treatment was called "brachytherapy" and my cancer was located in the "choroid". I'm not familiar with the English terms for these words, I literally put them on Google translator. In Spanish it would be "melanoma de coroides" for the condition and "braquiterapia epiescleral" for the treatment

This whole thing is available to any other citizen who may get in the same situation.

Now imagine, I dunno, some poor guy in Guam getting the same type of cancer and to make it worse no hospital in Guam can treat it. His situation would be completely fucked up.

Vanillalite said:
It's not though. You aren't getting unlimited healthcare in your country. Nobody is.

Part of this is all semantics in this thread.
Click to expand...
See this post. I don't really see how my healthcare is limited.
 
O

otake

Doesn't know that "You" is used in both the singular and plural
In the present and in the USA, the answer is no.

In other countries it is. Here it's not. It's a fact.
 
Kaleinc

Kaleinc

Banned
Saganator said:
Yes, to me, healthcare is included under "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as an unalienable right declared in the Declaration of Independence.
Click to expand...
100 people need a new kidney, 1 kidney is available. Whose unalienable right is it to get that kidney?
If you eat shit and don't exercise whose responsibility is it to treat that diabetes and failing heart?
 
F

Fluffernutter Pancake

Member
shiyrley said:
Did you read my earlier post on tthis thread?

I live in the Canary Islands, which is part of Spain. I got cancer in my left eye. Surgery couldn't be done inside the Canary Islands since there are only three hospitals in the entire country that were specialised on my specific type of cancer, and they are in the mainland.

I got all the required tests here in the island, for free of course, in a timely manner. Then the government paid for me and my mother a flight to Madrid and the AVE to Valladolid, where the hospital is, ALL EXPENSES INCLUDED (Food, stay, etc) , to get the final checks there, talk to the doctors, and set a date, then back to Tenerife. Then before the set date, the same thing, free flight for me and my mother, with free stay, free food, free everything. Well, actually, you pay the food and stay expenses yourself, then show the receipts when you come back, and they reimburse it. The only thing they directly pay upfront are the flights., But the point is they pay for it. We ended up spending exactly zero €. We were almost a month in Valladolid. Everything was free.

And you know what? I need to get checks in Valladolid periodically. These are free too. Fllights + expenses paid. The only difference is they don't pay for a partner's flight or expenses anymore, only me.

This whole thing is available to any other citizen who may get in the same situation.
Click to expand...

That sounds fantastic. It sounds like what could be available in the US if the Earth had unlimited resources, no one wanted to kill each other and there were no other long-term external physical threats to humanity (minimal military spending required), and there were enough bright, motivated, dedicated people to undergo the extreme sacrifices of training & career of being in the medical field, devoted either to research or treatment.

What treatment would have been available if the Canary Islands was left up to its own to come up with the treatments (research, training, manufacturing etc.)? How much money would have been left over for your gov't to spend on flights, food, hotels etc. after they got done paying for all that? What if 10 of your neighbors needed the same thing done that same month (or even year) as you?
 
T

TheOfficeMut

Unconfirmed Member
Hell yes. It's not something people seek in order to live beyond their means. It's not a new car, house or some other vanity project - it's simply an instrument used to survive, nothing more, nothing less.
 
S

shiyrley

Banned
Fluffernutter Pancake said:
That sounds fantastic. It sounds like what could be available in the US if the Earth had unlimited resources, no one wanted to kill each other (no military spending required), and there were enough bright, motivated, dedicated people to undergo the extreme sacrifices of training & career of being in the medical field, devoted either to research or treatment.

What treatment would have been available if the Canary Islands was left up to its own to come up with the treatments (research, training, manufacturing etc.)? How much money would have been left over for your gov't to spend on flights, food, hotels etc. after they got done paying for all that? What if 10 of your neighbors needed the same thing done that same month (or even year) as you?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but I obviously acknowledge that this can only happen in rich and developed countries. Which the US is.

Otherwise, how is this happening in Spain? Magic? And there are a lot of people travelling for free from many points of Spain to get the same treatment as me. The Canary Islands is the worst case scenario in terms of how much the travel will cost, sure, but still, my point remains.
 
U

Uncle_Classy

Member
Loki said:
In my opinion, no one has a "right" to another person's labor, so no, it shouldn't be a "right." However, I firmly believe in ensuring that healthcare is accessible and affordable for everyone within their means, and we are certainly wealthy enough as a society in the aggregate to make that happen.
Click to expand...

Health care being a "right" doesn't entitle anyone to another person's labor. That's the same disingenuous argument Rand Paul pulled out of his ass.

If healthcare were to be a right, it would mean exactly what was stated in the latter half of your post.
 
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