Is healthcare a right?

[snakestretcher]

What is "healthcare," first of all?

Modern medicine becomes increasingly technological, and increasingly expensive. Does every human being have a right to the latest high tech medical interventions? No matter how expensive?

What is the limit, and is there any limit?

If we are going to have universal health care, it should be basic emergency interventions. That's all I want. Not everyone believes in mainstream modern medicine. We should NOT all be forced to pay for it. I would rather not pay high taxes so all Americans, no matter how irresponsible they are about their own health, can have expensive mainstream interventions.

If we ever get universal healthcare, I hope it will include health education.

Yes, everyone has the right to access any and all medical procedures, irrespective of their cost. If I can have open heart surgery or any other procedure in England without it costing me a penny, why can't the same be done in America? Seems it's only the smug, self-satisfied 'I got mine' conservatives who are constantly whining about having to 'pay for someone else's treatment'. Why is it we don't hear this whining and bitching in the countries with universal healthcare? Probably because it works and everyone benefits. Of course there is always the expensive private option for exactly the same level of care.

 

[Slartibartfast]

What is "healthcare," first of all?

Modern medicine becomes increasingly technological, and increasingly expensive. Does every human being have a right to the latest high tech medical interventions? No matter how expensive?

What is the limit, and is there any limit?

If we are going to have universal health care, it should be basic emergency interventions. That's all I want. Not everyone believes in mainstream modern medicine. We should NOT all be forced to pay for it. I would rather not pay high taxes so all Americans, no matter how irresponsible they are about their own health, can have expensive mainstream interventions.

If we ever get universal healthcare, I hope it will include health education.

There are generally two schools of thoughts about where rights come from in western society (and I am oversimplifying a bit for brevity here).

1. Locke/Russeau: Right come a theoretical comparison of a man alone in the woods and their nature in that scenario and then seeks the minimum constraint for that same man in society. This is called natural rights (at least in the Locke-ian sense (natural rights is a term thats used A LOT in philosophy, so it needs that qualifier))
2. Rights come from the consent of the governed and its basically whatever the constituents of a particular society negotiate those rights to be within the constituents of that society. (Hume)

I tend to learn towards #2 since I find the analysis of #1 to be deeply flawed and basically ignore huge aspects of human nature. But to bring that into practical terms (in regards to health care), it means that Healthcare is a right if you subscribe to a philosophical foundation where healthcare can be a right if enough people agree, since this is all philosophy (a.k.a. theoretical bull****) anyway. In reality, nothing seems to work well in any pure philosophy vs real people (if you go too pure, people tend to die), so our society is a mix of #1 and #2.

In terms of the limitation question, I suspect that is an ever changing line at the intersection between cost, benefit, and available technology.

I also hope it includes health education.

 

[ataraxia]

Yes, everyone has the right to access any and all medical procedures, irrespective of their cost. If I can have open heart surgery or any other procedure in England without it costing me a penny, why can't the same be done in America? Seems it's only the smug, self-satisfied 'I got mine' conservatives who are constantly whining about having to 'pay for someone else's treatment'. Why is it we don't hear this whining and bitching in the countries with universal healthcare? Probably because it works and everyone benefits. Of course there is always the expensive private option for exactly the same level of care.

Actually, I am not sure many “conservatives” opposing universal healthcare have this smug “I got mine” attitude. Many of them don’t have theirs, yet they still oppose it.

A large part of this opposition to basic social safety nets comes from the fact that it will hurt blacks and minorities more than whites. So that makes it worth it to them. It may even be subconscious. This is not just my opinion. Listen to Lee Atwater, Reagan’s Chief political strategist, in this interview from 1981:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
Southern strategy - Wikipedia

 

[snakestretcher]

Actually, I am not sure many “conservatives” opposing universal healthcare have this smug “I got mine” attitude. Many of them don’t.

A large part of this opposition to basic social safety nets comes from the fact that it will hurt blacks and minorities more than whites. So that makes it worth it to them. It may even be subconscious. This is not just my opinion. Listen to Lee Atwater, Reagan’s Chief political strategist, in this interview from 1981:

I don't see minorities in Britain, or anywhere else that has UHC for that matter, being factually 'hurt' as you are implying. On the contrary we all love it, and it works (albeit creakily due to conservative government austerity measures and lack of funding).

 

[Port & Starboard]

I doubt the Scandinavian countries have our rates of obesity and smoking.

There has been a rise in certain Scandinavian regions and the EU also has a rising obesity rate.

 

[Dans La Lune]

Ron Paul, circa 2012, should give you an idea of where Republicans are on the issue.

 

[ataraxia]

I don't see minorities in Britain, or anywhere else that has UHC for that matter, being factually 'hurt' as you are implying. On the contrary we all love it, and it works (albeit creakily due to conservative government austerity measures and lack of funding).

I think you have misunderstood what I was trying to say. My point is that in the US, there is a perception by many white conservatives that LACK of UHC will hurt minorities more than it will the whites, so that makes it worth it. Rather live in fear and insecurity than potentially help any dark skinned people.

 

[snakestretcher]

I think you have misunderstood what I was trying to say. My point is that in the US, there is a perception by many white conservatives that LACK of UHC will hurt minorities more than it will the whites, so that makes it worth it. Rather live in fear and insecurity than potentially help any dark skinned people.

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

 

[Obscurity]

I doubt the Scandinavian countries have our rates of obesity and smoking.

No, they don't, then again, I don't think scandinavia has a faction of militant corporatists who have managed to convince "conservatives" of the BENEFIT of allowing companies to act in a most unrestrained manner.

 

[washunut]

I think you have misunderstood what I was trying to say. My point is that in the US, there is a perception by many white conservatives that LACK of UHC will hurt minorities more than it will the whites, so that makes it worth it. Rather live in fear and insecurity than potentially help any dark skinned people.

Not sure I have ever heard that there is a race driven dislike for UHC. Perhaps you could enlighten us how UHC helps/hurts one race versus another.

 

[Obscurity]

Healthcare is and should always be viewed as a human right. The only faction opposing this are corporatist ideologues and "I got mine" republicans who insist singularity is a merit we should all aspire to.

Ignoring the current issues with healthcare and ignoring the growing call for single payer is an inhumane travesty.

 

[snakestretcher]

Healthcare is and should always be viewed as a human right. The only faction opposing this are corporatist ideologues and "I got mine" republicans who insist singularity is a merit we should all aspire to.

Ignoring the current issues with healthcare and ignoring the growing call for single payer is an inhumane travesty.

It's far simpler; conservatives, if their comments here are typical examples, believe that UHC is going to rob them. They singularly fail to understand that everywhere with UHC has seen personal healthcare costs plummet, so they would, in fact, be far better off financially without getting shafted by the jaw-dropping costs of treatment and insurance cover currently enjoyed in America.

 

[Obscurity]

Rather live in fear and insecurity than potentially help any dark skinned people.

The primary issue with middle america voters tends to be their inability to care about things outside their own four walls, as documented in various articles. It has little to do with skin color.

Opinion | In the Land of Self-Defeat - The New York Times

If there is a paywall, here is a tidbit:

Only about 2,500 people live in my hometown. The library serves the entire county, which has an estimated 16,600 people, a marked decline from the population at the last census in 2010. The library has historically provided a variety of services for this community. It has offered summer reading camps for children and services like high-speed internet, sewing classes and academic help. I grew up going to the library and visited it often when I returned. It was always busy. I thought people would be supportive.

Instead, they started a fight. The battle began on the Facebook post, which had 240 comments by the end. The first comment came from Amie Hamilton, who reiterated her point when I interviewed her several months later. “If you want to make $25 an hour, please go to a city that can afford it,” she wrote. “We the people are not here to pay your excessive salaries through taxation or in any other way.”

There was general agreement among the Facebook commenters that no one in the area was paid that much — the librarian’s wages would have worked out to be about $42,200 a year — and the people who do actually earn incomes that are similar — teachers and many county officials — largely remained quiet. (Clinton has a median income of $34,764 and a poverty rate of 22.6 percent.) When a few of us, including me, pointed out that the candidate for the library job had a master’s degree, more people commented on the uselessness of education. “Call me narrow-minded but I’ve never understood why a librarian needs a four-year degree,” someone wrote. “We were taught Dewey decimal system in grade school. Never sounded like anything too tough.”

I watched the fight unfold with a sense of sadness, anger and frustration. I started arguing. It didn’t work. The pay request was pulled from the Quorum Court’s agenda.

I didn’t realize it at first, but the fight over the library was rolled up into a bigger one about the library building, and an even bigger fight than that, about the county government, what it should pay for, and how and whether people should be taxed at all. The library fight was, itself, a fight over the future of rural America, what it meant to choose to live in a county like mine, what my neighbors were willing to do for one another, what they were willing to sacrifice to foster a sense of community here.

Put plainly, these people don't think taxes should be used for anything except the military. No cultural enrichment. No libraries. No nothing. In fact, alot of them are solely focused on the four walls around them, and the rest of the country is useless to them.

Granted this is one example, but I find it... delicious... that so many "christians" of the day are so willing to brace economic and social darwinism, in the vein of Le Veyan Satanism. It's quite ironic to consider.

At the end of the day I believe plenty of folks feel like foreigners here. I know I do. I live in a country that barely looks like a country. Half the country thinks up is up and down is down, and the other half thinks up is down and down is up, and it swaps based on the individual issue. This country is cannibalistic; it consumes the constituency to befit the elites, on both sides.

The problem is inherently worse given the right wing's propensity to use the pen to sew such discord and hatred among their base of the "left" and "democrats" and "liberals" as to be insane. Listen to Rush Limbaugh or Hannity on the radio if you want an example of what these "republicans" are listening to; ranting and lunatic fever dreams about the marxists on the left destroying america; rhetoric about how democrats are destroying our values; rants about the separation of church and state and the infringement of rights by deep state democrat plants.

The whole thing is a gigantic rhetoric propaganda machine and 45% of the country has bought into it. Families are breaking apart because of this rhetoric. Violence is stewing just under the surface. And the whole time the left has turned a blind eye in sneering mockery at the right wing; at their peril. Some of the left are waking up to this reality and are beginning to challenge it. I'm one of those. I confront it at its face, and don't hesitate to call them an enemy equally, in sardonic terms strictly, because of their seditious partisan pundits.

Unless we are willing to confront the juggernaut of right wing propaganda and right wing rhetoric that is stirring the pot like this, then nothing will ever be fixed.

 

[Obscurity]

It's far simpler; conservatives, if their comments here are typical examples, believe that UHC is going to rob them. They singularly fail to understand that everywhere with UHC has seen personal healthcare costs plummet, so they would, in fact, be far better off financially without getting shafted by the jaw-dropping costs of treatment and insurance cover currently enjoyed in America.

I don't think that's the point at all. Anecdote; my cousin is dating a Trump supporter, who adamantly posts garbage like: "I never had a handout and worked for everything I've had."

First, this is a blatant falsehood; he went to public school (something the tax payers funded for him) and has a good job at a manufacturing firm here locally (subsidized through tax breaks via the tax payers, and on public land at a discounted lease rate due to the tax payer subsidies.)

There are a few issues with his premise.

1. It is false on its face.
2. There is no heroism in it.

I despise the strong man nature of his commentary. It is ignorant garbage and there is nothing noble about embracing struggle for the sake of struggle; some will claim it creates stronger people but in his case it created a judgmental dickhead who seriously thinks no one ever helped him, with anything.

They are about the struggle and ensuring everyone else has to endure it, even when we know that's not the case. They are about misery, and supporting only those within their 4 walls.

 

[snakestretcher]

Ron Paul, circa 2012, should give you an idea of where Republicans are on the issue.

'Should we let him die?'

'I practised medicine...the church will take care of him'.

Unbelievable. This 'personal responsibility' crap is all very well if you can afford it. Don't get sick in 2019 America if you're poor.

 

[Slartibartfast]

I don't think that's the point at all. Anecdote; my cousin is dating a Trump supporter, who adamantly posts garbage like: "I never had a handout and worked for everything I've had."

First, this is a blatant falsehood; he went to public school (something the tax payers funded for him) and has a good job at a manufacturing firm here locally (subsidized through tax breaks via the tax payers, and on public land at a discounted lease rate due to the tax payer subsidies.)

There are a few issues with his premise.

1. It is false on its face.
2. There is no heroism in it.

I despise the strong man nature of his commentary. It is ignorant garbage and there is nothing noble about embracing struggle for the sake of struggle; some will claim it creates stronger people but in his case it created a judgmental dickhead who seriously thinks no one ever helped him, with anything.

They are about the struggle and ensuring everyone else has to endure it, even when we know that's not the case. They are about misery, and supporting only those within their 4 walls.

The general way I observe that it works with this type of conservative is

1. A person/group has no legitimacy on their own (blank slate when born), except that they have the will to try and do stuff
2. Accomplishing stuff makes a person/group legitimate and good results make a person justified

If:
doing stuff not achieve - identity and ego suffers and they are "less of a person"
else:
doing stuff achieved - I am important and justified because stuff was done and that importance is self evident or stuff could have never been accomplished

This creates a few results
1. My community is important because it accomplishes stuff - e.g. military and soldiers are to be celebrated because $evil_thing_destroyed
2. If stuff is accomplished outside of this dynamic - e.g. illegitimate outside "help" - that person/group is a cheater and accomplished stuff means nothing and gives negative points for ego/identity
3. Community is extremely important, because we all agree on how stuff should be and therefore we can share a bond
4. If important stuff not accomplished, it is evidence of cheating and/or evil
5. family/group is important because it teaches the individual the proper stuff to do
6. empathy/concern must either be directed within group or to help new individual integrate into group, to help with accomplishing important stuff in the future

Outside of this dynamic, the emotional response tends to be disgust - disgust is the gateway to legitimizing violence (liberals are just as susceptible to this trap, but approach disgust from a different thought process with another set of bugs)

This is not just American Conservatives, you can see the exact same dynamic in many cultures. Even hard core Bolsheviks had this type of response.

So the guy in your scenario believes that because he needs to.

 

[ttwtt78640]

1) Even with a good catastrophic plan, a 10 day hospital stay is gonna cost you more than that 16K, so its not like your saving money in the worst case scenario. 2) And lets not even talk about the fact that if you are worried about paying that premium, its pretty safe to assume that you don't have the money saved up to pay your portion of the stay even after the plan kicks in anyway.

1) Of course it will, but how often is that "10 day hospital stay" going to occur? Let's say once every 20 years (for those under 65) and that cost is $50K and insurance covers 80% leaving your "co-pay" cost at $10K. The cost of insurance is $8K/year or $160K over those 20 years - about 4X what paying that insurance "saved you" from having to pay (or owing).

2) Exactly my point, but let's do talk about saving only 25% of that $8K/year ($2K/year) which would otherwise go to (M4A?) insurance premiums annually. At $2K/year (even with no interest) your "cookie jar" would have $80K in it after 20 years - less that $50K for the "10 day hospital stay" that leaves $30K in your "cookie jar" (MSA?).

 

[Taylor]

Yes. Everyone is free to seek medical attention. That doesn't, however, mean that it's free; paid for by the tax payers.

Yes, if healthcare is a right then it is an individual right. People no more have a right to the care from others than they have a right to the speech of others or the efforts of others to further their own pursuit of happiness.

 

[ttwtt78640]

We're on Medicare part B and spend about $3200 a year, too. The payments are for Part B's Medicare Advantage which covers the 20% that Medicare A doesn't cover. I have AARP's United Healthcare Medicare Complete Plan 2 which has zero deductibles if I go to a doctor that accepts Medicare. But I'm going to change to another plan because the one I currently have requires referrals...and I don't want to do that. Both my husband and I have pensions and SS so we're not hurting financially. But if prices keep going up that may change.

OK, so why are you all excited about (looking forward to?) paying $16K/year for Bernie Sanders' M4A plan instead of that under $4K/year which you pay now?

 

[ttwtt78640]

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, spearheaded by the US in 1948 and subsequently signed by most nations of the world, access to healthcare is a right- along with food, clean water, and a basic education.



So ironic that this document, originally spearheaded by the US and its allies as a response to the horrors of Nazi Germany, and opposed initially only by the Soviet bloc countries, South Africa under apartheid, and Saudi Arabia, are now so under siege right here at home. Sad.

The idea that "access to" means "paid for with public funds" is BS and you know it.

 

[ataraxia]

Yes, if healthcare is a right then it is an individual right. People no more have a right to the care from others than they have a right to the speech of others or the efforts of others to further their own pursuit of happiness.

So we should get rid of public schools, fire and police departments, etc...?

 

[ataraxia]

The idea that "access to" means "paid for with public funds" is BS and you know it.

So it’s OK to let orphaned children in our society just die off, reassuring ourselves that they have access to healthcare and food, and society owes them nothing more?

 

[Slartibartfast]

Yes, if healthcare is a right then it is an individual right. People no more have a right to the care from others than they have a right to the speech of others or the efforts of others to further their own pursuit of happiness.

So we should get rid of public schools, fire and police departments, etc...?

the angst between the dual philosophies of Locke-ian natural rights and consent of the governed (Hume) is the foundation of so much political frustration in our society. The constitution blends elements of both.

 

[Manc Skipper]

1) Of course it will, but how often is that "10 day hospital stay" going to occur? Let's say once every 20 years (for those under 65) and that cost is $50K and insurance covers 80% leaving your "co-pay" cost at $10K. The cost of insurance is $8K/year or $160K over those 20 years - about 4X what paying that insurance "saved you" from having to pay (or owing).

2) Exactly my point, but let's do talk about saving only 25% of that $8K/year ($2K/year) which would otherwise go to (M4A?) insurance premiums annually. At $2K/year (even with no interest) your "cookie jar" would have $80K in it after 20 years - less that $50K for the "10 day hospital stay" that leaves $30K in your "cookie jar" (MSA?).

It doesn't matter how frequently it happens, it's devastating when it does. It's also at the whim of the insurance company to not pay out on some technicality.I saw a twitter thread yesterday on this topic.

rob delaney on Twitter: "I say a lot in this @NewYorker interview but this is the part on health care. 1/2… "

 

[Thoreau72]

Did you read my post at all? Some of the taxpayers are responsible about their own health. We can't prevent all diseases, but we can prevent the most common ones. Should I pay higher taxes so millions of Americans can continue eating at McDonalds and smoking cigarettes?

Once 5G is fully implemented, there will be all sorts of new diseases and conditions generated by the radiation induced by the 5G system. Yay, plenty of healthcare for everybody, and a brand new source of radiation.

Ain't life grand! :mrgreen: