Is healthcare a right? why or why not?

[Cecilie1200]

Thanks for the non-answer. How does everyone having the means to be in decent health degrade the quality of life?

You assumption that government is the best means for providing healthcare to everyone is simply incorrect. It is obvious that if everyone had access to decent healthcare the quality of life would be improved. But it is not at all obvious that using government to do so will achieve the results you desire. In fact, looking at the current US system of massive government involvement in healthcare pre-Obamacare (FDA, AMA, Medicare, Medicaid, countless mandates, abusive patents in pharmaceuticals, insurance companies in bed with government--the list goes on) it should be obvious that government in healthcare is a disaster.

Say I want to provide healthcare for my town. I decide to go into every small or big business with a gun, and demand all of the cash in the store and in the wallets of the customers. I take all of the money out of every register and every pocket of every person I come across. I then use that money to provide healthcare to the poor. That, in essence, is exactly what government run healthcare is. Do you not find anything wrong with that?

You're overstating the case a little with the gun imagery. But if that's the case, using your argument, it'd be wrong to be paying taxes for basics like roads and bridges, right?

No, because roads and bridges are the proper purview of the government - and by the way, the purview of STATE and LOCAL governments, not federal - while personal, individual things like healthcare most assuredly are not.

I will never fathom why liberals are so simpleminded that they cannot see issues in anything but this puerile, "all-or-nothing" view. It must be micromanaging, socialist nanny government, or anarchy. There can be no in-between. It's ridiculous.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Every civilized nation feels that health care is a right, with the exception of the United States.

And exactly why is it that you feel the United States should be trying to imitate other countries? Why don't you just move to one of them, if you think they're so much better than we are, and leave this country the way it is for those of us who like it the way it is (or the way it was, before fucktards like you started defacing it)?

 

[Cecilie1200]

You're overstating the case a little with the gun imagery. But if that's the case, using your argument, it'd be wrong to be paying taxes for basics like roads and bridges, right?

Government enforces all of its policies with the threat of violence. I wish that were overstating the case, but it is not. To honestly answer your question, yes: taxation to pay for government roads and bridges follows the same principle.

That is what led Thomas Paine to say "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

If government is an intolerable evil, then your arguments suggests we don't need it. But we do, no matter how much we love it or hate it. And government assisted health care is part of that equation, whether we like it or not.

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

 

[madasheck]

Government enforces all of its policies with the threat of violence. I wish that were overstating the case, but it is not. To honestly answer your question, yes: taxation to pay for government roads and bridges follows the same principle.

That is what led Thomas Paine to say "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

If government is an intolerable evil, then your arguments suggests we don't need it. But we do, no matter how much we love it or hate it. And government assisted health care is part of that equation, whether we like it or not.

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

 

[ShackledNation]

If government is an intolerable evil, then your arguments suggests we don't need it. But we do, no matter how much we love it or hate it. And government assisted health care is part of that equation, whether we like it or not.

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

 

[Gadawg73]

Private health care company stock skyrocketed today in Europe.
Why? And even in a bad debt situation there.
Because their health delivery system IS MORE STABLE AND UNIFORM than our dysfunctional system where we have over 1000 health insurance companies dictating health care.
Does anyone understand that it is health CARE. The care is the delivery of what you pay for and what we get we pay almost THREE TIMES more than other non government health care controlled countries.
The myth is that government partnering with the private sector to control THE DELIVERY SYSTEM, THE CARE is bad.
Just the opposite is true as evidenced by the rise in share prices in private health care companies in Europe.
What we have here is UNSUSTAINABLE. We now have blank check health care as it is.
"I have mine and will use it to the max and that is all I care about" is the mentality here.
And look where it has us.
Germany nas it down right.

 

[Gadawg73]

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

How is over 1000 DIFFERENT insurance companies controlling health care any better?
And it would not be government controlling the health care. It would BE YOU AND I controlling it.
Which does not happen now. The insurance companies control it.

 

[ShackledNation]

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

How is over 1000 DIFFERENT insurance companies controlling health care any better?
And it would not be government controlling the health care. It would BE YOU AND I controlling it.
Which does not happen now. The insurance companies control it.

Your mistake is assuming we currently have free market healthcare. We have corporatist, fascist healthcare in this country.


1. Mandates
Layers of regulation plague every aspect of medical care and health insurance in America. In the health-insurance industry, for instance, each state imposes dozens of regulatory mandates on health insurers, requiring them to include coverage of everything from massage therapy to hair implants. The reason for mandates is that the message-therapy and hair-implant industries (and many others) hire lobbyists to bribe state legislators to require insurers to cover their particular practice if they want to sell insurance within a state. In other words, it gives these companies a guaranteed market, because insurance cannot be offered without covering their products.

Each mandate increases the cost of health insurance and probably increases the typical health-insurance policy by hundreds, or thousands, of dollars yearly. Not to mention that if a company providing a healthcare service has customers that are forced to buy from it, it has less incentive to keep costs down because it can never lose its buyers (health insurance companies mandated to buy from them).

The state also creates state-wide cartels with laws prohibiting the portability of some aspects of health insurance. (For example, some employer-provided health insurance covers pharmaceuticals in Maryland, but not in other states.). Cartelization always raises prices higher than they normally should or would be.

2. Government grants hospitals monopolies
Having taken over most of the hospital industry, government-run or government-subsidized hospitals have created regional monopoly power for themselves with so-called "certificate-of-need" (CON) regulation. How this regulatory scam works is that an existing hospital in an area will give itself the legal "right" to decide whether there is a legitimate "need" for more hospitals. They have given themselves, in other words, the right to veto new competition in the hospital industry. It is as if the Microsoft Corporation had a legal right to veto new competition in the computer industry.

Not surprisingly, research has shown that CON regulation has increased hospital costs. CON regulation is also used to block competition in various healthcare professions as well, from nursing to home healthcare.

3. AMA licensing restricts the supply of doctors, granting them monopoly profits.
Physicians have long enjoyed a degree of monopoly power derived from state legislatures that delegate to the American Medical Association (the doctors' union) the "right" to limit entry into medical schools through accreditation. Only graduates of accredited (by the AMA) medical schools are licensed to practice medicine. The AMA has used these state-granted privileges to limit both the number of medical schools and the number of medical-school graduates. The reduced supply of doctors drives up the price of medical care and the income of AMA members. Hundreds of other health professions limit entry with the help of occupational licensing regulation, the primary effect of which is to create monopoly profits, not to ensure quality of care.

4. FDA protects status-quo pharmaceutical companies by banning products that compete with existing companies
Government regulation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, primarily by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), increases healthcare costs, denies the benefits of myriad helpful drugs and devices, and creates monopoly power. It has literally been responsible for the premature death of thousands of Americans who have been deprived of drugs that were long available to people in other countries.

FDA bureaucrats are extremely risk averse: On the one hand, it costs them nothing personally to delay a life-saving drug for years, if not decades, by demanding test after test. On the other hand, if they permit a drug to enter the marketplace that turns out to be dangerous, it is a public-relations disaster for the agency, which it does not want to be associated with. Consequently, the entrance of new drugs and medical devices onto the market is often delayed by years, costing many lives and inflicting much needless pain on those already suffering, while driving up prices.

The FDA also makes the market for pharmaceuticals less competitive by restricting what advertising may say for myriad drugs — even aspirin. New drugs do consumers no good if they do not know about them. Advertising restrictions imposed by the FDA, therefore, prop up the profits of incumbent drug marketers at the expense of newcomers in the industry and of consumers.

5. Government created liability crisis
The government's legal system is also responsible for what used to be called "the liability crisis." The genesis of this crisis began in the 1960s. The government courts began accepting the Chicago School Law and Economics argument that assigning all liability in product-liability cases to manufacturers would be a good way to minimize the "social costs" of accidents. Manufacturers know more about products such as medical devices than anyone else, the argument went, so contract law and shared responsibility for accidents with the users of the products were thrown out the window.

So, when accidents occur, slick trial lawyers have had an easy time convincing dumbed-down juries to award millions, or hundreds of millions, of dollars in liability lawsuits. These lawsuits have bankrupted the manufacturers of many medical devices, while convincing others that the devices are too risky to make. The effect on the healthcare consumer is poorer healthcare and higher prices.

Taken from this article.

On every level--local, state, and federal--government is in bed with all of the healthcare players and meddling in our lives. Government mandates certain services be covered by insurers and plans, a one size fits all policy giving suppliers of that service a guaranteed market, thus driving up prices. CON regulation creates hospital monopolies that prevent competition and lead to higher prices and lower quality service. The American Medical Association artificially restricts the supply of doctors, protecting their profits and leading to higher prices. The FDA serves to keep current pharmaceutical companies in charge, limiting innovation and advertising thus keeping prices high. Government mandating that manufacuruers are liable scares out innovation, and forces higher prices of medical devices to cover for legal costs.

Insurance is more expensive, hospital care is more expensive, doctors are more expensive, drugs are more expensive, and medical devices are more expensive all because of government interference in the industry. If the free market causes all these rising prices, why is it that computer technology keeps getting cheaper? Because we have much more of a free market in that industry.

Common problem in all of this? Government. The companies are all acting as scumbags as well, but without government setting up the framework they would not be able to.

And if government healthcare means you and I controlling healthcare, riddle me this. Do you and I control the wars overseas? In a free market, companies can only make money if they get people to buy their product. Government can just take our money and say deal with it.

 

[madasheck]

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

Government doesn't administer health care. Hospitals do.

 

[ShackledNation]

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

Government doesn't administer health care. Hospitals do.

I didn't say anything about government administering healthcare. It is important to note that 20% of US hospitals are, in fact, government owned public hospitals. Also, look to my previous post about CON regulations to see the nature of the US hospital system.

 

[Greenbeard]

Also, look to my previous post about CON regulations to see the nature of the US hospital system.

Your post mischaracterizes what a CON is ("...an existing hospital in an area will give itself the legal 'right' to decide whether there is a legitimate 'need' for more hospitals. They have given themselves, in other words, the right to veto new competition in the hospital industry."). Hospitals do not get veto power over competitors in states with CON requirements.

 

[madasheck]

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

Government doesn't administer health care. Hospitals do.

I didn't say anything about government administering healthcare. It is important to note that 20% of US hospitals are, in fact, government owned public hospitals. Also, look to my previous post about CON regulations to see the nature of the US hospital system.

You've been going back and forth about the government controlling healthcare, then you deny it. Good grief. All Obama is doing is setting up a system for people who need health care to get it. So what's the problem? People need health care. People should get health care. It'll never happen otherwise. Or is that the Republican plan -- screw the people who need health care and are having trouble affording it as long as I have mine?

 

[ShackledNation]

Also, look to my previous post about CON regulations to see the nature of the US hospital system.

Your post mischaracterizes what a CON is ("...an existing hospital in an area will give itself the legal 'right' to decide whether there is a legitimate 'need' for more hospitals. They have given themselves, in other words, the right to veto new competition in the hospital industry."). Hospitals do not get veto power over competitors in states with CON requirements.

I am not mischaracterizing them at all. In states with CON requirements, a new hospital cannot establish itself unless it first goes to a government bureaucracy to get permission, which will only be granted if it is deemed there is a "need" for another hospital. Who has a big say in determining whether or not there is a need? The existing hospitals. CON requirements simply serve to allow existing hospitals to block out competition and receive monopoly profits.

 

[ShackledNation]

Government doesn't administer health care. Hospitals do.

I didn't say anything about government administering healthcare. It is important to note that 20% of US hospitals are, in fact, government owned public hospitals. Also, look to my previous post about CON regulations to see the nature of the US hospital system.

You've been going back and forth about the government controlling healthcare, then you deny it. Good grief. All Obama is doing is setting up a system for people who need health care to get it. So what's the problem? People need health care. People should get health care. It'll never happen otherwise. Or is that the Republican plan -- screw the people who need health care and are having trouble affording it as long as I have mine?

Maybe you have trouble reading, but nothing I am referring to has to do with Obamacare at all. I am talking about the system prior to Obamacare that Obamacare did absolutely nothing to fix.

 

[Cecilie1200]

If government is an intolerable evil, then your arguments suggests we don't need it. But we do, no matter how much we love it or hate it. And government assisted health care is part of that equation, whether we like it or not.

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Not really, and not just because I don't believe for a second that there will be any measurable increase in any such thing. I realize that leftists have this odd notion that people are just dropping dead in the streets out there, totally ignored by people who step over them to get to their high rises and power lunches, but you might want to rejoin us in Reality Land for a while.

I hate to break it to you, Sparky, but it makes no difference to my life if you die or not. Likewise, I have trouble believing that people who cannot and will not provide for their own medical care, who will just languish and let themselves die without Nanny Government to care for them, were ever contributing anything to society that will be missed.

By the way, Sparky, YOU are the one espousing Scrooge's point, not me. He didn't want to give PERSONAL charity because there were already PUBLIC charities for the indigent. And here you are, advocating public charity over personal, just like him.

If you want to quote literature to support your point, you might try actually READING IT FIRST. Frigging illiterate public school graduate leftists.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

Well, if we want to talk about preventable deaths, let's talk about people in socialized-medicine countries, who die while waiting for surgery because the wait times are so long. How's THAT for preventable?

 

[Cecilie1200]

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

Government doesn't administer health care. Hospitals do.

And if you believe that, I have some bottom land I'd like to sell you. Just don't ask what it's on the bottom OF.

 

[logical4u]

If government is an intolerable evil, then your arguments suggests we don't need it. But we do, no matter how much we love it or hate it. And government assisted health care is part of that equation, whether we like it or not.

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

"Government" has historically been the number one cause of death for both its citizens and for declared enemies (that had something the 'gov't' wanted). I am stunned that given history, so many people are handing the lives of their loved ones to bureaucrats? It makes no sense. Doctors are going broke, with the new lack of payment or reduction of payment under this administration. That means less specialists to go around. Who will be giving the free healthcare? Will it be unqualified welfare recipients, that the gov't says 'you have received benefits long enough, if you want a check, you will report for duty'? Will it be students in colleges that cannot get a gov't student loan without "volunteering"? These are scary times, and this government is determined to take away the "rights" listed in the Bill of Rights, to be replaced by "government given-rights" as long as you behave as the government wants you to behave. This upcoming election may be the last chance we have to keep our "God-given" rights.

 

[logical4u]

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

How is over 1000 DIFFERENT insurance companies controlling health care any better?
And it would not be government controlling the health care. It would BE YOU AND I controlling it.
Which does not happen now. The insurance companies control it.

It would be a MONOPOLY. 1000 different companies do not "control" health care. Those companies compete for customers and must provide a service that is "desired" (if they do not provide fair service, they do not stay in business). Also, because they do not "control" health care, people are free to go to medical providers and pay cash (I know, that is a foreign concept). Wealthy people can pay to specialized service with medical provider while supplying themselves as the experimental subject. In many cases, after they die, a huge chunk of money is donated to the specialist service that helped them, working for cures that benefit "the many". The gov't will "judge" who is worthy of intensive medical care, and who is "unworthy" (non-beneficial to the 'gov't'). Is this what you want? For the gov't to guide the direction of medical studies (it will be easier for them to eliminate (sterilization or kill) the unhealthy and promote a breeding program of healthier people (super race). Are you thinking this thru?

 

[Polk]

No, it's not a right. It is good public policy to provide for the health of the citizenry, but it's not a right.