Healthcare--a right or not?

You see the word legal in there? Without the law, you have none of that.
Or one's own personal moral compass. And each person has a different moral compass.

Nothing natural anywhere there.

Now I've asked you at least 3 times. What is our natural right. You can not bring yourself to answer that simple single question.
Dodge and dodge, ignore and change the topic all you want.
You said there are natural rights, what are they? Remember, no law is needed for any natural right.

If a law is needed, then it is a legal right. Granted by society and enforced by gov't, typically. At least in the USA.

 

There is a difference between CHOOSING to help someone and BEING FORCED to. You might want to look into which "side" gives more to charity, in real numbers and as a percentage of income. You may be surprised.

 

Where is the responsibility for the individual citizen to live their life in a way to minimize the NEED for healthcare? Or do you believe that people should jut be able to live any way they want as long as someone else pays the consequences?

 

Remember that post you said was boring? One of those was a quote from the guy who compiled the Common Law. Much of it codified by legislation, Common Law is what still governs the day to day interactions of most Americans. It is a body of law, the result of centuries of people using nothing but their own common sense to settle disputes and documenting their reasoning. Roman Civil law emerged the same way. The two of those account for what democratic catastrophes have left the entire western world of law that really does work in society. Emergent law maximizes peace by minimizing conflict because it evolved for that exact purpose. Knowing more about the Common Law than anyone, it shouldn't be surprising that William Blackstone was a natural law guy.

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

 

That would be pretty inconsistent, wouldn't it?

 

Once you are born, you have a natural right to life. Not to any specific quality or length of life, but to life, from beginning to end.

 

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to write this line:

That is a stupid question, and you should feel stupid for asking it! The fact that you ask it makes it clear that you don't understand anything written in this thread.

 

or in some cases MORE services.

 

We are defining it very poorly it seems. Many "poor" people live better than some working people. Democracy sucks sometimes.

 

Life is defined as from beginning to end. "Sustaining" it may not even be possible, so how could it possibly be considered a right?

 

I don't believe that. Government never does anything efficiently. Look at the VA.

 

I think what you are calling a "right" should be rightfully called an "entitlement". Rights are something you assert yourself, without requiring anything from anybody else. Entitlements are things you are granted at the cost of someone else.

 

And? What are savings for? When you need to use them. I can't think of a better reason to spend savings than on one's own or family's health. If someone has assets, why should the government (i.e. taxpayers, i.e. OTHER PEOPLE), pay money towards that person's medical expenses? I mean, jeez. If you're going to ask me to chip in, exhaust your own resources first.

 

Basically, though in theory there's supposed to be the concepts of liberty and justice involved in the application of the "might".

 

Babies practice free speech from birth, automatically. IT's there unless it's taken away. And even then it's hard to take away exactly, you can mostly just offer consequences for asserting it.

 

Rights and laws are two different things. Laws don't give rights, they restrict them.

 

Good quality affordable health care is a right.

 

The VA is more than just "your city", and people are dying waiting for care across the country. CNN says over 300,000.

 

Natural rights are the innumberable rights derived from individual sovereignty (a.k.a. the concept of self ownership).

 

Financial studies show that 75-80% of all health care spending in this country is spent on people aged 65 and above. The implication we can draw from that is that the cost of insurance is driven by the fact that as we age we grow more infirm and need more care. We can point at people who live unhealthy lifestyles and say, "I don't want to pay for that guy." I understand that sentiment, but the facts are that the biggest driver of health care costs is just aging, something we have no control over. Not that people can't prolong healthy life through good habits, but eventually infirmity overtakes everybody and this is really where most of our health care dollar goes.

Statistically, the best way to minimize the need for health care is to stay young forever. Please let me know if you figure out how to do that. But barring that discovery, we may prolong healthy life through healthy living, but eventually, inevitably, good health will leave us, and our need for care will cost a lot more.

 

When I commenced my role in the labor market in 1956, we had no health care. Even the Feds did not pay for health care.

The whammy started because at last doctors and hospitals could get a cut of massive amounts of money, once the older group purchased health insurance. We at our then young ages would buy a health plan when we got married and it was mostly to cover the birth of our children.

I raised a bunch of kids. The times I had to take them to a doctor or hospital was so rare I can't recall an instance of hospital care and seldom to a doctor.

Kids are darned near indestructible.

I had heart bypass surgery in 2011. From 1938 to 2011 is how long? I was 73. Sure some need that at an early age. I was on medicare and they picked up almost all of the bills.

I suspect my fate will include a stroke. I dread that but have nothing that will prevent it other than the meds I take. I hope those do the trick.

But for a young healthy family, what is in it for them to pay tens of thousands of dollars and not need a doctor?

From Wikipedia

 

That's a good question. To answer that, I think we have to ask the question, "Why is the cost of medical insurance so high?" The answer to that question is that we have a percentage of the population that doesn't pay anything at all that we have to pay for, and we have a percentage that are paying some but not all of the cost of their coverage that again, the rest of us pay for. Here's an interesting study. Pay attention to the top line which is the aggregate of all the states.

http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/?currentTimeframe=0

What we see is that 56% of the population has medical insurance through their employer or their own expense. We see that 30% are on Medicaid, some other public program, or uninsured. (The other 14% are on Medicare.) But what this means is that 56% of the population is paying for their medical insurance plus the medical costs for another 30% of the population.

You may recall that I talked extensively about this on another thread a while back, suggesting that if a person is employed full time, they should be insured and have enough money to get by. I suggested that given that 41% of the nation's wealth is controlled by 1% of the population, that is do-able. We simply lack the will to do it, and we have been convinced that that idea is somehow un-American, when, in fact, it wasn't long ago in this country that having a full time job meant you could get by. And I'll bet you can guess who convinced us that a living wage is un-American.

My father's father died of cancer when my father was just a very little boy. So his mother raised him and his brother and sister in a small apartment. She worked every day at a textile company. She got by.
That would be impossible today without government assistance. But then, back in the 1930s, 41% of the nation's wealth was not controlled by 1% of the population either.

So, since we are unwilling to give low-income workers a living, we simply pay for them in other ways. We pay through unaffordable medical insurance costs and through taxation, placing a huge burden on the middle class. But, thank God, the 1% are fine. Because we know in our hearts that if that $30 million/year CEO had to take only $10 million, our whole civilization would collapse and we'd lose all our freedom, giving it over to the communists. Right?

 

But it is based on risk, otherwise there wouldn't have been the need to force companies to offer cover for people with pre-existing conditions. How does a person with a congenital disorder ever get cover otherwise?

 

"Rights" are imaginary provisions, rules people make that change as convenient to the current thinking.

Is Justice under the law a right? It would seem that justice would be more of a right than healthcare, as it usually relates to offenses committed against people. Ask your lawyer about getting justice- and many will answer, "How much justice can you afford?"