Health Care as a Right
The House proposal to raise taxes on the very rich to help cover health insurance for all brings into focus what has been a hidden issue in the debate until now: Should medical care be a right guaranteed to all by all, as education, safety in the streets and freedom from foreign invasion now are as part of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
If government pays for the schooling of Americans and their safety in the streets, is it any less logical to consider protection from life-threatening disease as a basic right rather than an individual choice?
“Tax is a four-letter word” with voters, says conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, pointing out that even families not in the top 1 percent “hope they’re going to be there someday. So they don’t necessarily think it’s fair.”
Even the Rightmost legislators and their constituents wouldn’t propose privatizing the armed forces (pace Blackwater) and the nation’s school systems but will argue that even partial public responsibility for saving lives in doctors’ offices and hospital waiting rooms is unfair.
MORE.
12 Responses to “Health Care as a Right”
My co-blogger, Clint, wrote a good post on this subject today arguing that Health Care should indeed be a right:
I agree with you Robert that the biggest hurdle is overcoming our Pavlovian response to tax increases. But universal health care access is something worth paying for, and something we can afford as the richest country on the planet.
[sigh] I've gone away for a few days and I return to encounter stuff like this…
Health care is not and never has been, never will be a “right” [sic], and you have been long corrected about your misuse of the language (whether accidental or deliberate).
Grow up and get honest. If you want government (probably the federal government, something you routinely neglect to specify, for whatever poor “reason”[s]) to provide health care (and control it, which is what you will have if you have government pay for it, even if you dishonestly claim that this isn't the same as provision and control), simply say so, and say that you want it to be a (federal?) government entitlement by law, but quit with the childishess and the dishonesty (and other failures) with the “right” nonsense.
“Just do it” and for a Change [tm], be honest and more grown-up about it. (First challenge: paying for it.)
Incidentally, Chris, the whining language you quoted above (which is incorrect as a matter of fact as well, but different defects and their qualities or charateristics can annoy more than that they happen to be false words) is no different than a far-left law professor whose book I've read (and I believe I still own, packed in one of my boxes in storage) that is similarly childish as well as incorrect, and not only misconstrues part of the Constitution itself, but also specifically makes the same illegitimate (and illogical) references to the Declaration of Independence (including liberty in a radical-personal-behavior mode as well as the reference to “pursuit of happiness”) and the losers' favorite worthless resort, the Preamble, to “justify” a judge's finding and ruling (creating law out of thin air, i.e., activism) that people in the USA (not limited to US citizens, naturally) are entitled to, have a “right” [sic], to a guaranteed minimum income (with the corresponding implication if not outright expression that the [federal] government is obliged to provide this).
As with such lunacy about a guaranteed minimum income, so with health care, or anything else that is claimed to be a bogus “right” [sic; a claim on others' resources, legislated if need be as an entitlement], be it by similar misconstruction of US law and references to non-justicially-enforceable BS elsewhere in our nation's body of literature, or outside the USA, such as the general “right to transport” [sic[ I've seen actually asserted by activists who despise the automobile and insist people have a “right” to, and that governments are obliged to provide and even favor, alternatives.
It's bullshit. Grow up and get real, people.
“something we can afford as the richest country on the planet”
I can say that about _anything_ I may happen to want, any time. Next “argument,” please.
Note that “other developed nations have government health care” (or a much higher level of taxes as well as government intrusion and direction) is also a worthless “argument,” no matter the strength of emotion that accompanies it — too.
DLS,
You don't agree universal health care worth paying for. I think it is worth it for moral and economic reasons.
I also think the idea of health care access as a right makes perfect sense, and I'd much rather our government focus on something productive like that, instead of diverting our money to building more bombs and rifles.
I've never understood why advocates of healthcare as a basic, positive right (IOW, not just reasonable conditions for access to healthcare, but actually having public funding for all) don't feel the same way about even more basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. I mean, I realize we DO fund those things to some extent, but we also fund emergency health care in basically the same measure. We provide safety nets for all of these needs, but not unlimited access on an equal basis to those who have the means to pay their own way.
And if you do go all the way down that path, you're then dealing with a completely communistic system, which hasn't worked out too well when it has been tried.
“You don't agree universal health care worth paying for. I think it is worth it for moral and economic reasons.”
Chris, don't rush (due to agitation?) to assume things that aren't true. What I have said is that if “we” want public health care, we should openly and honestly say so, and at or near the very same time be mature and intelligent about all that means, not only about the actual nature of public care (as with government in general) but how to pay for it, seriously, not vapidly if not dishonestly or cowardly when addressing such facts. At this time I'm ambivalent about public care, as I know the theoretical advantages this would mean for many, but I am not unrealistic like so many of you starry-eyed (or worse, pathologically Angry and Impatient) advocates. I know there's a _broad_ trend among the public toward public (government) health care, if in the end because all known alternatives seem worse. (I don't even bother trying to reason with the unreasonable about issues like constitutional legitimacy, political and practical reservations, and other sadly-all-too-often-excessively-IQ-straining subjects any more, typically.)
“I also think the idea of health care access as a right makes perfect sense, and I'd much rather our government focus on something productive like that, instead of diverting our money to building more bombs and rifles.”
It's not a “right” [sic; claim on others' or "society's" resources] but could be made a legal entitlement (with of course all the pejorative connotations and correct negative uses that word “entitlement” has _earned_).
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“I've never understood why advocates of healthcare as a basic, positive right (IOW, not just reasonable conditions for access to healthcare, but actually having public funding for all) don't feel the same way about even more basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing.”
C. Stanley, some have done this. A lightweight example is something somewhat removed from “basic” needs (or “human needs,” the typically sappy, gooey euphemism employed; I still wonder aloud why we haven't transformed Washington to have a Cabinet-level Department of Human Needs, including Bureaus of Income Security and Health Security). I specifically have seen some (in a global context, think of a UN declaration of Rights that is superlative, above not only FDR's “freedoms” but the UN's list of “rights”) who say that automobile-haters have the “right” to alternative (if need be, publically provided) “transport.”
More related to what you think of, I have seen on another thread (advocating for health care as a right) the same exact misconstructions of our Constitution and misuses of other documents in a failed attempt to rationalize what they want, saying that the “right” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to argue that this broad “right” (as well as related misconstruction of the Constitution itself, as well as predictable reliance on the Preamble) includes a “right” by everyone in the USA to a guaranteed minimum income.
I suppose if the minimum income is (institutionally, Forever) Never Enough, then other provisions like “free” housing, clothing, and other things (“free I-Tunes,” say, along with Internet access and a computer to exploit it, if you take Al Franken's latest appeal to Sotomayor farther than he took it, which was bad enough) follow also, naturally. All of these, of course, also are “rights” that materialize suddenly.
We do not, under our present Constitution, have a right to healthcare. We do, however, have the means to amend that. What we lack is the political will to do so. And perhaps the civic literacy to force such a change through our system.
I would also point out that education is only a right afforded at the state level. The federal government has a long history of funding local education, but it is not because anything says we, as citizens, are entitled to an education. Various states Constitutions require the states to act to ensure public education, though.
Of course, everyone hopes to be in the top 1 percent of income earners – who doesn't want to be rich? But very few people understand that it doesn't take that much to get there and it doesn't leave you “rich” necessarily – but the income distribution is skewed very badly, even at only the top 1 percent. Take a look.
“We do not, under our present Constitution, have a right to healthcare. We do, however, have the means to amend that.”
That is, through the correct legislative process (or though a convention), not by a judge's activist ruling.
(like Al Franken saying there is a “right” — by mangling the First Amendment — to Internet access, prior to making BS statements about judicial activism that he in fact would wholeheartedly support!)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009…
and –
“education is only a right afforded at the state level”
More broadly, this is where activists who want government health care and establishing a right by law to it (a legal entitlement) should be primarily directed, but they have contempt for constitutional federalism and don't hesitate to look first or even _only_ to Washington, instead. [rolling eyes] I doubt any thought has been put by government-health-care advocates at all toward being _proper_ and looking at _state_ projects.
I agree with what DLS is saying. We do not have the right to health care, and, frankly, we should not be including it in our list of rights. What's next? The right to clothing? To food? When are we going to stop? Do we eventually have to fund everything for everyone? Does the Government then take over the very feeding of people. That's where this alleged right is going to be taking us, to the point where the Government itself covers all “basic needs” for all people.
Ya gotta love Biden………yes, I'll take all the lefty spin out there on how this is rational economic theory.
“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.
“Well, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, I’m telling you.”
I seem to remember having this same debate about a month ago. Here's a recap of my view's on health care as a “right”: