Sunday, October 12, 2008

Health care as a 'right'

Health care consists of goods (medicine, bandages, etc.) and services (the labor of doctors, nurses, etc.). To say that health care is a "right," as liberals do, is to say that everyone has a "right" to those goods and services.

In other words, liberals assert that you have a "right" to the property and labor of others, so long as that property and labor are related to medical care. If you own a clothing store, people don't have a "right" to your clothes, but if you own a hospital or a pharmaceutical company, people have a "right" to your products and services.

This just goes to show how liberalism corrupts language, so that opponents of liberal policies can be accused of opposing people's"rights," and the adherents of liberalism are taught to believe that the expropriation of other people's labor and property is an exercise of their "rights."

5 comments:

  1. Go for the whole "Costitution by Fiat" read:
    * The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
    * The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
    * The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
    * The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
    * The right of every family to a decent home;
    * The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
    * The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
    * The right to a good education.

    Of course, utopianism mixed with a lot of dope triggers mutations, as explored at some length by the excellent Sayet.

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  2. Stacy:
    What the right is, is the right for someone else to pay your medical bills. Anyone that is sick or injured can walk into an emergency room and they must be treated. That is healthcare. Getting someone else to pay for it is not. This should be a code word for socialism, but socialism is not a dirty word anymore. This country's forefathers would be aghast at what you describe.

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  3. I would hope that none of you would expect the Fire Dept to race over to put out your burning homes or the police dept to serve and protect you or none of you to understand that when you mix healthcare with FOR PROFIT you get sick and that's what you righties deserve.

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  4. @phtap
    Oh, you sweet, sweet conflator, you. ;)
    The usual blurring of the line between legitimate, external public services like roads, police, and first responders with health care.
    Let me tell you something about health care, serving in the military as I have.
    It works great when you have young people and the fascist capability to order them into workout clothing and formation runs.
    You can enjoy administrative euthanasia, and whisk the unfit off to civilian corn fields.
    Putting the government in charge of health care really will drive up the PROFIT of the providers. Who do you think owns the politicians that write the laws?
    I submit that you either personally stand to gain from the socialist takeover of medicine, or you may not have researched what a marginal win these regimes have been in Europe.
    The anecdotal evidence I've heard has fallen short of positive.
    Then again, I'm a chronic unbeliever in the Church of Socialism--mayhap they'll produce a pill for me.

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  5. Profit would be nice if the insurance companies made one. Look at AIG? There is nothing wrong with profit in and of itself and the reason healthcare is so expensive is not because insurance companies make a profit, but because the laws of supply and demand do no work freely. Insurance promotes demand because people see it as a free benefit and abuse it. When demand goes up, so does the price. With more people using the system, supply goes down relative to the people using it, which raises the price. On top of this hospitals treat many people that do not pay This cost is passed on as well, but it still is not as expensive as socialized medicine.

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