Re: Not an explicit right - but you can justify it in terms of productivity
It depends on how you think of healthcare. If you look @ the US stats for personal bankruptcy, what typically sends people over the edge is paying for catastrophic healthcare, their own or their loved one's.
I agree that those situations are tragic and reflect poorly on society. However, I disagree that taxing the rich to treat the poor is the best solution.
First, one must ask why people need to
bankrupt themselves to purchase life-saving healthcare. Are they paying for a brand-new, cutting-edge treatment? If so, they have to face the fact that new technology is more expensive and takes a while to trickle down. On the other hand, if mainstream procedures are costing a fortune, that suggests something very wrong with the economics of the healthcare industry. For example, having too much red tape around drug development pushes up the cost, forcing big pharma to charge more to recover their investment; slashing non-essential regulations would lower the cost and therefore the market price.
Second, why aren't people donating their money freely, either from generosity or to maintain a good reputation? If a man in your church needed life-saving treatment, would you not all chip in to help him? But you probably wouldn't do the same for a stranger on the subway, right? The problem here is that humans evolved to live in small communities, where everybody knows each other and is connected by friendship and family. When we live in cities, we hardly know our neighbors and don't consider them our kin, which means we have no loyalty to them and owe them nothing.
I often give money or food to homeless people, because I can relate to their situation. That doesn't mean I'd be okay with them
stealing ten bucks off me, let alone some bureaucrat stealing a hundred, passing it through eight other bureaucrats, and each of them clipping ten bucks off as their administration fee.
Granted, that access to health care per se is not spelled out as part of the social contract between US citizens & their government @ whatever level. But given the days of productivity lost to sickness, dental issues, childcare issues related to the child's health - I think it makes sense on a competitive basis (competing with other countries to be productive) to provide @ least access to basic healthcare - preventative annual checkups, dental checkups yearly, basic scans for BP, fat index, any serious changes, etc. Preventative health care is much cheaper & more effective than pulling out all the stops when the patient's condition(s) has progressed to the stage of a life-or-death struggle.
Why can't people just brush their teeth, eat less junk, and check for lumps every morning? And since most people are busy, how would they fit all those checkups into their schedules? If we waste time scanning everybody "just in case", we also have less resources available for those who genuinely need treatment - unless we ramp up the number of health professionals, but that would cost far more than the benefit we get from prevention.
It's the same thinking that provides for free public education K-12, subsidizes community colleges & state universities...
I see public education as a left-wing indoctrination machine, nothing more. It certainly doesn't teach any valuable life skills. Until that changes, I see no reason why it should exist. Universities are still the best way to learn STEM subjects, but otherwise just exist to rob thousands of dollars from aimless young people.
