In your opinion is healthcare a right or a personal responsibility?

Answer 1

Healthcare is a right in most civilized countries.

Answer

Maybe in some countries, but not the US. We have enough entitlements already, and this new bill will bankrupt the economy.

Answer

Health Care is not a "right". A "right" is something that everyone is born with, or as some would say "endowed by their creator with". A "right", by definition, does not impose any burden on another individual, except that of non-interference. Any right that takes away rights from others cannot be a right. Furthermore, a "right" is both free and unlimited. You don't have to pay anything to exercise it, and you can have as much of it as you want.

It is tempting to think of health care as a right. The problem with that, however, is that, in order for you to receive health care, someone ELSE has to PROVIDE health care. Maybe it's the doctor that treats you in the emergency room. The Doctor Who treats you, the nurse who assists, the receptionist, the pharmacist that fills your prescription, the drug company that made the drug. All of those people are providing your health care. They don't HAVE to provide your health care. There's no law that says they MUST work in the medical profession. They do so because they CHOOSE to do so. If health care is a RIGHT, then they have no choice. They MUST provide your health care.

Health care is not free. All of those people involved in providing your health care have to be paid. Someone has to give them money for providing health care. The payer might be you, or it might be your insurance company, or it might be the government, but SOMEBODY is going to pay for health care. If health care was a RIGHT, then no one would have to pay for it. And the poor doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and drug companies would not only be forced to be involved in a profession they might not want to be in, they would have to do so WITHOUT COMPENSATION. That is the very definition of slavery. How can you possibly define health care as a "right", when exercising that "right", by necessity, denies the most important right - freedom - from others?

Okay, so maybe you don't want the health care providers to be slaves. Well, who's going to pay them? The insurance companies? If health care is a right, then it's free, and the insurance companies cannot charge premiums, and therefore cannot stay in business. So (and this is what "health care" as a "right" inevitably comes down to), the GOVERNMENT has to pay for everyone's health care. But where are they going to get the money to do so? Taxes. That means that the government is forcibly taking the hard-earned fruits of one person's labor, against his will, and using it to pay for a service to another person. So, exercising your "right" to health care, does in fact put a BURDEN on another person. So it cannot be a right.

Health care is not unlimited. There are only so many doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and drug companies in existence. If everyone in the country wanted to go to the emergency room every day, for every little minor ailment from a hangnail to a headache, the emergency rooms could not possibly handle that much traffic. That, of course, is an extreme example, but let me be clear. IF health care is a right, then if everyone in the country went to the emergency room every day, they would ALL receive health care. That won't happen, so health care is NOT a right.

But, putting aside my extreme example, there is no doubt that, if health care were free and unlimited (as any "right", by definition, is), then there would be huge increase in people seeking health care. Meanwhile, the numbers of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and drug companies will not increase (in fact, it is likely that those numbers will DECREASE, as evidenced by polls that say over one-third of doctors will consider retiring from medicine if the health care reform bill passes). There is no way that the larger number of patients can be accommodated by the current number of health care providers, let alone by the drastically reduced number of health care providers we are likely to see in the not-too-distant-future, as young people starting college now will be less likely go into medicine. Health care will have to RATIONED. Rights cannot be rationed.

(This is not directly related to the question, but I'd like to make another point here. When working men and women get sick, they have to take time off from work. As the number of people seeking health care - for minor problems that don't really require missing any work - increases, it will take longer for working men and women with more serious problems to be seen by a doctor, and therefore it will take longer for them to get well, and they will miss more work. So, even if they don't have to pay actual cash dollars out of their pockets to be seen by a doctor or get a prescription, there is still a COST, namely lost wages, that they will have to pay, and this cost will, without a doubt, INCREASE if health care becomes "free". Moreover, the economy will suffer a huge loss in overall productivity because of the increased amount of time workers have to take off to receive health care.)

Viewing health care as a "right" might win an election, but it is not a tenable policy. Health care is not free. It cannot be exercised without limit. It cannot be exercised without imposing a burden on others. It simply is NOT a right. The notion of health care as a "right" must be immediately discarded, along with such things as a "right to food", or a "right to housing", or a "right to a job". None of these things can be viewed as a "right" because they are not free, they are not unlimited, and they impose burdens on others. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't do something to provide health care, food, a home, or a job to those who are in need of them. But we simply cannot allow politicians to portray these things as "rights".

Answer

The concepts of "right" and "personal responsibility" are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

We have a moral and ethical imperative to ensure everyone has access to resources governing basic survival, such as health care.

Moral and Ethical Imperative?

Just because you SAY that I have a moral and ethical imperative does not make it so. I do not recognize any such imperative. The only moral and ethical imperative I recognize is to ensure freedom. And no one has a "right" to my hard-earned money. Health care is a service, provided for a fee. Just like a haircut. Sure, health care is more important. But that has nothing to do with it. In fact, if anything, the importance of health care is a very good reason why it should NOT be viewed as a right.

You talk about "resources governing basic survival". But what are these resources? The skills and knowledge of doctors, for one. Who OWNS those resources? The doctors themselves, for now. But if everyone has access to those resources, then the doctors don't own their skills and knowledge anymore, and cannot be paid for them. They spent tens of thousands of dollars in tuition to obtain those skills and knowledge, but they don't own them. Instead, these skills and knowledge are now at the beck and call of every Tom, Dick, and Harry whose life is in danger. Similar arguments can be made for all of the resources that go into providing health care: the skills and knowledge of nurses; the expensive equipment used to diagnose patients; the bandages, syringes, and other supplies; the equipment and raw materials that go into making and testing drugs; the skills and knowledge of the scientists and lab technicians that make and test the drugs; even the skills of the receptionists at the doctor's office - if health care is a "right", then all of these resources, BY DEFINITION, are PUBLIC GOODS, and no one owns them. Aside from the obvious violation of private property rights, intellectual property rights, and the prohibition of slavery, this creates another huge problem. Namely, the complete lack of profit incentive. The entire health care industry will fall apart if we ever start seriously treating health care as a "right".

You can talk all day long about whether it is a good thing to provide health care for those who cannot afford it. And I will be glad to debate you on that. But you cannot call health care a "right". Because health care is not free. Health care is not unlimited. Health care imposes a burden on others. Health care completely fails every criteria of a "right". Health care is N0T a right.

Another County heard from:

It's encouraging to have debate on important issues, but discouraging to see the same tired old arguments that have been rejected time and again as if those arguments are something new. We need better.

The argument that no one can be forced to pay for health care because others have no right to one's hard earned money has been argued and dismissed already. Medicare provides health care to persons over a certain age and everyone who works pays into the system even though not at that time even entitled to the health care being paid for. The same goes for the Social Security System. Try refusing to pay those payroll taxes and see what happens. So that argument is out.

The argument that a person cannot be forced to buy insurance is decent but deceased as well. Mandatory automobile insurance laws in various states have been held to be constitutional. So that argument is out.

The argument that somehow doctors' services and medical equipment will be at everyone's beck and call is frivolous, since health care will come at a price just like Medicare does. Medicare payroll taxes are used to pay doctors and buy medical equipment. No one is forced to provide such services or goods for free. So that argument is out.

A criminal defendant has a constitutional right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment even if they cannot pay for one. No one has conscripted all the lawyers or their legal pads in order to provided legal services even that type of service is a right. So that argument is out.

The argument that if somethings are deemed rights they become PUBLIC GOODS by definition is simply false. If something is a "right", it must be provided by the government not the providers. The Due Process clause forbids a taking without just compensation. That means the government cannot just take a doctor's services or a drug company's medications without first paying just compensation for them. Legal services to indigent defendants are not public goods available for the taking by the government.

It's time to stop using all these worn out cliches. Sure an argument can be made that health care will be a burden on some, but those arguments have already been made and overruled. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits government from placing burdens on people.

Answer

Just because one side happens to have temporarily won a legislative or legal battle does not mean that the other side's arguments are "wrong". Slavery won many legislative and legal battles for nearly a hundred years. Did that make slavery right? Were the abolitionists dismissed?

Social Security and Medicare are just as bad (though not to the same extent as the current health care bill). They take money from one person and give it to another. There's nothing in the Constitution to support that, regardless of what any politician or judge says.

Automobile insurance is NOT mandatory. I have every right to not purchase automobile insurance. I just have to give up the privilege of operating a motor vehicle on state-owned roads. Therefore, so-called "mandatory" automobile insurance is not a violation of my rights. Mandatory health insurance, however, most certainly IS a violation of my rights, because I have to purchase it, whether I want to or not, whether I want medical care or not.

Of course doctors will continue to be paid. That's why, by definition, health care is not a "right", which is what this question is all about. You can argue all day about whether it's a good thing to do, but you can't call it a "right".

The sixth amendment does not guarantee a court-appointed attorney when a defendant can't afford one. Read it.

"Rights" are not provided by governments. They exist, IN SPITE of governments. If the government (or anyone for that matter) has to provide something, by definition, it is not a "right".

If by "worn-out cliches", you mean the generally accepted definition of the word "right", then I'll stop using that worn-out cliche when hell freezes over, and not a day sooner.

Answer

A key principle of why a National Health care service is bad is because it takes away from actual rights. If the government is your health care provider they have access to your files, that they normally would need a warrant to. This means if you was to have a DNA test for medical reasons, that DNA that normally would require a warrant to be on government file, is now on a government database as soon as it was taken.

If health care eliminates other rights, such as needing a warrant for DNA, than how can it with in it's self be a right.