Why have people come to believe health care is a "right" when it actually isn't?

[theDoctorisIn]

"Rights" are defined by society, so the fact that so many people believe healthcare to be a "right" is, in a way, what makes it a "right".

I would like to agree with you, but in fact rights do not exist in our society until the Constitution explicitly says so.

Unfortunately, since any right to health care could only exist relative to the available medical resources AND respecting the rights of medical professionals, I cannot see any way that a constitutional amendment could be written that could satisfy those conditions.

In this country.

"Society" is more than just us.

I hate the word "right".

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Also, OP seems to believe that getting free health care at the emergency room is better than paying for health insurance.

I wish someone would explain to me how rw's can whine that they hate socialism while simultaneously demanding it.

 

[Richard-H]

Also, OP seems to believe that getting free health care at the emergency room is better than paying for health insurance.

I wish someone would explain to me how rw's can whine that they hate socialism while simultaneously demanding it.

The same way that they say they want to reduce the federal deficit, but refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy.

 

[dblack]

Ahh.... good to have Luddly back, shilling for Wellpoint with more Orwellian bullshit...

About the OP - I have not heard or seen where anyone says its a right. What ACA assumes is that all Americans should have the right to buy affordable health care.

Why should congress be able to get their health care free while refusing to allow citizens to BUY affordable care?

ACA does nothing of the sort. It ignores health care prices and takes away the most important right consumers have: the right to say "no thanks" to a product or service that isn't worth a shit.

Also, OP seems to believe that getting free health care at the emergency room is better than paying for health insurance.

I wish someone would explain to me how rw's can whine that they hate socialism while simultaneously demanding it.

I wish you would back up this claim at least once instead of blindly repeating it over and over again. I'm certainly making no such demand. Put up or shut up.

 

[RKMBrown]

"Rights" are defined by society, so the fact that so many people believe healthcare to be a "right" is, in a way, what makes it a "right".

I would like to agree with you, but in fact rights do not exist in our society until the Constitution explicitly says so.

Unfortunately, since any right to health care could only exist relative to the available medical resources AND respecting the rights of medical professionals, I cannot see any way that a constitutional amendment could be written that could satisfy those conditions.

And again you expose your ignorance of what the constitution is. The Constitution outlines government power and restricts it. The mere fact that taking a shit wasn't mentioned in the Constitution does not mean we do not have the right to take a shit without getting government permission.

 

[RKMBrown]

About the OP - I have not heard or seen where anyone says its a right. What ACA assumes is that all Americans should have the right to buy affordable health care.

Why should congress be able to get their health care free while refusing to allow citizens to BUY affordable care?

Funny how affordable care means most people will have to pay two to three times more for "affordable" care so that some people can get free health care. Affordable my ass.

 

[RKMBrown]

Also, OP seems to believe that getting free health care at the emergency room is better than paying for health insurance.

I wish someone would explain to me how rw's can whine that they hate socialism while simultaneously demanding it.

The same way that they say they want to reduce the federal deficit, but refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy.

You are lying. Taxes for the "wealthy" are progressively higher. Further, they have gone up. Why lie so much?

 

[RKMBrown]

Health care insurance started going downhill in this country during the Great Depression and World War II, despite the numerous technical advances that were made during that period.

Then-President FDR clamped huge restrictions onto many parts of the economy during the Depression (resulting in that depression stretching out further than any ever had in world history), and they became even worse during WWII. One of them was wage and price controls, which became onerous as many able-bodied men joined the armed services to fight in the war.

Attracting talented people to fulfill the jobs they left was tough enough with so many good men joining up, and the govt's wage controls made the situation worse when employers found they couldn't offer higher wages to get people to hire on. Whether this was justifiable, not to say effective, by the war emergency is debatable.

Employers screamed bloody murder as their businesses approached collapse due to unfilled jobs, and while government refused to lift its wage and price controls, they announced the employers could offer benefits in lieu of pay to attract workers. One benefit was a tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance.

This helped somewhat, but with an employer only able to offer a few insurance plans, it locked employees into fairly uncompetetive market unless he changed jobs. And FDR's relatively new policy of "tax withholding" was extended to the employee part of the payments for insurance, further insulating the employee fro the gut-check of having to write weekly or monthly checks to the insurance company.

Employers offered "Cadillac" plans in their efforts to attract workers, and the employees seldom saw the actual cost of those expensive plans, which often paid for routine medications and office visits formerly not covered by real insurance plans. That, plus the lack of competition most insurance companies found themselves facing, removed a lot of their impetus to pare costs. And employees became used to health care which "seemed free", and started thinking of it as something akin to a "right", since it (sort of) appeared to cost nothing.

When the war ended, government did NOT remove the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance even though the circumstances that made it desirable were now gone. And so health insurance has existed in a strange nether world ever since for most people, with employees of a company locked into the few (or one) insurance plan offered by that company with little likelihood they will ever leave it. At the same time it appeared to cost little or nothing, with even routine services (far beyond the major-event coverage real insurance is for) included and seeming "complimentary".

Fast forward to the 21st century. Now we have self-serving politicians screaming from the rooftops that health care is somehow a "right", though it comes nowhere close to resembling a right to liberty, right to speech, right to self-defense etc. - all of which are based on the fundamental right to be left alone and to associate only voluntarily with others. And most people, used to generations of "free" health care that was caused by that very government long ago, are actually believing it, despite the clear unworkability of the idea, the unnecessary expense and clumsiness of one-size-fits-all (or even three-sizes-fit-all) policies administered from thousand of miles away in Washington.

The cockeyed notion that we somehow have a "right" to have a broken arm set or an infection cleaned and treated by others, came (as so many cockeyed ideas do) from government intrusion into private matters in the first place.

We should be thankful that the government didn't offer tax breaks for food purchased by one's employer. Or by now, the same deluded people would be screaming that they had a "right" to food (some actually believe this one too, after generations of food stamps). Ditto for rent, phone service, etc., all of which have been tainted at one time or another by government programs to make them nearly "free".

Weaning Americans off these destructive addictions to "free" necessities and "rights" that aren't rights and never were, will be painful, as breaking an addiction always is. But it is no less necessary, if we are to survive as sovereign citizens in a free society.

Suppose, for example, you were in a plane crash on a deserted island, you had severe and painful injuries, that you had a gun in your possession and that there was a doctor among the survivors who had the ability and medical supplies to give you pain killers and fix your injury.

But,

He refused to do so. He just didn't want to.

I have no doubt that you'd decide, in a heartbeat, that there was an inalienable right to health care and that you'd use that gun to insure that the doctor respected your inalienable right to health care.

And there we go... typical democrat mentality, let's make slaves of the rich and the doctors, let's force them to take care of us. Weak.

 

[regent]

Health care insurance started going downhill in this country during the Great Depression and World War II, despite the numerous technical advances that were made during that period.

Then-President FDR clamped huge restrictions onto many parts of the economy during the Depression (resulting in that depression stretching out further than any ever had in world history), and they became even worse during WWII. One of them was wage and price controls, which became onerous as many able-bodied men joined the armed services to fight in the war.

Attracting talented people to fulfill the jobs they left was tough enough with so many good men joining up, and the govt's wage controls made the situation worse when employers found they couldn't offer higher wages to get people to hire on. Whether this was justifiable, not to say effective, by the war emergency is debatable.

Employers screamed bloody murder as their businesses approached collapse due to unfilled jobs, and while government refused to lift its wage and price controls, they announced the employers could offer benefits in lieu of pay to attract workers. One benefit was a tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance.

This helped somewhat, but with an employer only able to offer a few insurance plans, it locked employees into fairly uncompetetive market unless he changed jobs. And FDR's relatively new policy of "tax withholding" was extended to the employee part of the payments for insurance, further insulating the employee fro the gut-check of having to write weekly or monthly checks to the insurance company.

Employers offered "Cadillac" plans in their efforts to attract workers, and the employees seldom saw the actual cost of those expensive plans, which often paid for routine medications and office visits formerly not covered by real insurance plans. That, plus the lack of competition most insurance companies found themselves facing, removed a lot of their impetus to pare costs. And employees became used to health care which "seemed free", and started thinking of it as something akin to a "right", since it (sort of) appeared to cost nothing.

When the war ended, government did NOT remove the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance even though the circumstances that made it desirable were now gone. And so health insurance has existed in a strange nether world ever since for most people, with employees of a company locked into the few (or one) insurance plan offered by that company with little likelihood they will ever leave it. At the same time it appeared to cost little or nothing, with even routine services (far beyond the major-event coverage real insurance is for) included and seeming "complimentary".

Fast forward to the 21st century. Now we have self-serving politicians screaming from the rooftops that health care is somehow a "right", though it comes nowhere close to resembling a right to liberty, right to speech, right to self-defense etc. - all of which are based on the fundamental right to be left alone and to associate only voluntarily with others. And most people, used to generations of "free" health care that was caused by that very government long ago, are actually believing it, despite the clear unworkability of the idea, the unnecessary expense and clumsiness of one-size-fits-all (or even three-sizes-fit-all) policies administered from thousand of miles away in Washington.

The cockeyed notion that we somehow have a "right" to have a broken arm set or an infection cleaned and treated by others, came (as so many cockeyed ideas do) from government intrusion into private matters in the first place.

We should be thankful that the government didn't offer tax breaks for food purchased by one's employer. Or by now, the same deluded people would be screaming that they had a "right" to food (some actually believe this one too, after generations of food stamps). Ditto for rent, phone service, etc., all of which have been tainted at one time or another by government programs to make them nearly "free".

Weaning Americans off these destructive addictions to "free" necessities and "rights" that aren't rights and never were, will be painful, as breaking an addiction always is. But it is no less necessary, if we are to survive as sovereign citizens in a free society.

Suppose, for example, you were in a plane crash on a deserted island, you had severe and painful injuries, that you had a gun in your possession and that there was a doctor among the survivors who had the ability and medical supplies to give you pain killers and fix your injury.

But,

He refused to do so. He just didn't want to.

I have no doubt that you'd decide, in a heartbeat, that there was an inalienable right to health care and that you'd use that gun to insure that the doctor respected your inalienable right to health care.

And there we go... typical democrat mentality, let's make slaves of the rich and the doctors, let's force them to take care of us. Weak.

Taking care of the poor does not enslave people, any more than making the poor enter the military make slaves, perhaps one is closer however.
The question should be, does every American have the right to health care. If the answer is yes then we move on to the next question, but right now some are apparently still grappling with that question.
So does every American have a right to health care?

 

[RKMBrown]

Suppose, for example, you were in a plane crash on a deserted island, you had severe and painful injuries, that you had a gun in your possession and that there was a doctor among the survivors who had the ability and medical supplies to give you pain killers and fix your injury.

But,

He refused to do so. He just didn't want to.

I have no doubt that you'd decide, in a heartbeat, that there was an inalienable right to health care and that you'd use that gun to insure that the doctor respected your inalienable right to health care.

And there we go... typical democrat mentality, let's make slaves of the rich and the doctors, let's force them to take care of us. Weak.

Taking care of the poor does not enslave people, any more than making the poor enter the military make slaves, perhaps one is closer however.
The question should be, does every American have the right to health care. If the answer is yes then we move on to the next question, but right now some are apparently still grappling with that question.
So does every American have a right to health care?

No fool. The question is does everyone have the right to screw people over, tie them to the ground and rape them. Apparently you think so.

Forcing people to pay for your health care is not a right, its a crime. Buying health care is a right. Providing health care is a right. Getting free health care is a privilege that the poor enjoy when people give them charity. Turning receiving charity into a right by stealing money from my children is an egregious offense worthy of the electric chair, ok worthy of jail, as felony theft is a crime.

 

[dblack]

Suppose, for example, you were in a plane crash on a deserted island, you had severe and painful injuries, that you had a gun in your possession and that there was a doctor among the survivors who had the ability and medical supplies to give you pain killers and fix your injury.

But,

He refused to do so. He just didn't want to.

I have no doubt that you'd decide, in a heartbeat, that there was an inalienable right to health care and that you'd use that gun to insure that the doctor respected your inalienable right to health care.

And there we go... typical democrat mentality, let's make slaves of the rich and the doctors, let's force them to take care of us. Weak.

Taking care of the poor does not enslave people, any more than making the poor enter the military make slaves, perhaps one is closer however.
The question should be, does every American have the right to health care. If the answer is yes then we move on to the next question, but right now some are apparently still grappling with that question.
So does every American have a right to health care?

What does that mean? What are its practical implications?

If a 'right to health care' means I have the right to force others to provide me with health care, either directly or via government, then no, no one has that right. If that's not what it means, that how would you define it? What are it's practical implications?

 

[rightwinger]

For those who believe in "Let em die"

Healthcare is not a right

 

[RKMBrown]

For those who believe in "Let em die"

Healthcare is not a right

That's right RW if we don't let you rape us that means we want to let you die.

 

[rightwinger]

For those who believe in "Let em die"

Healthcare is not a right

That's right RW if we don't let you rape us that means we want to let you die.

Save us your sexual fantasies

 

[Antares]

We the people decide what will or will not be a right when we decide what kind of society, or country, we're going to be.

Bullshit kid, pay your own way.....

 

[rightwinger]

Modern societies take care of their people

We do not stand by and let them suffer. Healthcare is a basic human right. To withhold it is barbaric

 

[Geaux4it]

Modern societies take care of their people

We do not stand by and let them suffer. Healthcare is a basic human right. To withhold it is barbaric

Um, no it's not an entitlement

It's an option based on economic factors

-Geaux

 

[rightwinger]

Modern societies take care of their people

We do not stand by and let them suffer. Healthcare is a basic human right. To withhold it is barbaric

Um, no it's not an entitlement

It's an option based on economic factors

-Geaux

Societies are judged by how they take care of their most vulnerable citizens

The US is the wealthiest country on earth. Let em die does not reflect well on us

 

[Geaux4it]

Modern societies take care of their people

We do not stand by and let them suffer. Healthcare is a basic human right. To withhold it is barbaric

Um, no it's not an entitlement

It's an option based on economic factors

-Geaux

Societies are judged by how they take care of their most vulnerable citizens

The US is the wealthiest country on earth. Let em die does not reflect well on us

I don't give a rip about other societies and how they view the US.

-Geaux

 

[regent]

And there we go... typical democrat mentality, let's make slaves of the rich and the doctors, let's force them to take care of us. Weak.

Taking care of the poor does not enslave people, any more than making the poor enter the military make slaves, perhaps one is closer however.
The question should be, does every American have the right to health care. If the answer is yes then we move on to the next question, but right now some are apparently still grappling with that question.
So does every American have a right to health care?

No fool. The question is does everyone have the right to screw people over, tie them to the ground and rape them. Apparently you think so.

Forcing people to pay for your health care is not a right, its a crime. Buying health care is a right. Providing health care is a right. Getting free health care is a privilege that the poor enjoy when people give them charity. Turning receiving charity into a right by stealing money from my children is an egregious offense worthy of the electric chair, ok worthy of jail, as felony theft is a crime.

Of course health care has always been a right for part of the American population. The questions at this time are, should the right to health care be expanded to cover more of the population and what does health care coverage mean.