Healthcare--a right or not?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by WAN, Feb 23, 2017.

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  1. Seth Bullock

    Seth Bullock Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I support the idea of paying for the health care costs of the disabled, poor children, and the elderly.
     
  2. WAN

    WAN Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What about the right to property? If someone takes from me a chair I made, I won't die. But the right to own property still exists.
     
  3. Mr. Swedish Guy

    Mr. Swedish Guy New Member

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    my problem is that it seems you claim that these natural rights are somehow more real than e.g. my set of rights. As I see it, we all have our own set of rights, what we believe is right and wrong... You believe in the natural rights, I believe in some other set of rights. Both are equally real. Or rather, both are equally imaginary. Becuase we are talking about rights in some absolute sense, yes? So it doesn't make sense for me when you claim that these rights "just exist". No they don't. You're making a claim about how the world is, so you need to provide some evidence or reasoning for it.
     
  4. Lesh

    Lesh Banned

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    I didn't say that was exclusive...there are many kinds of rights...but life is a pretty important one
     
  5. Crownline

    Crownline Banned at Members Request

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    I didn't mean "you" as in you personally, it was a blanket statement toward everyone.
     
  6. webrockk

    webrockk Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I have a tinge of OCD, and I missed the (stupid) edit window. the bolded should read: "Man cannot grant rights, man can only try to protect them, infringe upon or revoke them."
     
  7. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    Let's say that you're fishing and some bear comes out of the nearby forest and attacks you. Is there a moral value at work here? Not really because the bear is just looking for food, just as you were before being rudely interrupted. The difference between both you and the bear is that the bear has no moral agency, and that moral agency is the ability to discriminate between good and bad.

    Now, when dealing with humans, we ascribe moral agency to them. We can say "Bob has the ability to differentiate between good and bad", and that gives Bob a choice to make between being good or being bad. If Bob decides to enslave Bill, Bob is being a bad guy because Bob knows that slavery is wrong. Why is it wrong? Because we own our bodies. We own our freedom. We have personal property rights to our bodies because of the concept of good and bad, and that notion of good and bad is oftentimes conflated with a higher power, such as God.

    You can sell yourself into enslavement, and many people do that for 40 hours a week. So enslavement isn't necessarily bad. It's when it is done against our will that it becomes the bad kunta kinte kind of slavery.

    The study of ethics is where the idea of natural rights is derived. Not from watching the history of humanity, but rather from trying to figure out what is good, and what is bad.

    Which brings us back to the idea of healthcare paid for with taxes. Some guy can get a gizzard transplant using money that was forcefully taken by Trump's IRS goons. This is the law. However, is it a right? Remember that rights are based on moral values. If it is a right, then taking my money forcibly is the good and just thing to do. I've helped give somebody a new gizzard because the law requiring me to do so or face imprisonment is morally just.

    This also means that personal property rights to what is mine no longer exist, or they exist so long as there are no gizzards that need to be transplanted. Once some guy with a bad gizzard shows up at the emergency room, it is now morally just to place a call to the IRS to let them know that it's a good thing to force me to give even more money.
     
  8. WAN

    WAN Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh, I see. Sorry then.
     
  9. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    Yes, the idea of rights is based on universal absolutes. Without universals, there can be no philosophy, and the study of ethics becomes a mere list of things we call good and bad, and my list need not be the same as your list.

    So we have to come up with some kind of mutually acceptable list of things that are always good, and always bad.

    On your list, where do you have taking my stuff? I have "stealing Belch's car" on the bad side of the ledger. Where is "stealing Belch's car" on your list?
     
  10. Diuretic

    Diuretic Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps looking at it as a "right" is a bit confusing. I don't think it is though. Regardless I do think that it should be available free to those who need it. Call it a social benefit. Having citizens in good health is a benefit for the individual and for their society.
     
  11. webrockk

    webrockk Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Natural (Common) Law
     
  12. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    Ahh, a great example. So shall we put "free healthcare" on both of our lists?

    You get free health care, I get free health care, Bob gets free healthcare. Hell, let's just make it "Everybody gets free healthcare"

    Can we agree with everybody getting free healthcare?

    I know a few doctors who probably won't agree with this because they're the ones that are being asked to work for free. However, once you get doctors to sign up for working for free, then we're in business.
     
  13. WAN

    WAN Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So....if you walk into the wilderness, and a bear tries to eat you. Does this mean that the bear is trying to violate your inherent right to life? Such a question would not make sense, because a bear isn't a human. Only humans can violate (or choose to uphold) rights.
    These pre-existing rights only existed from previous societies, which were all made up of humans. Only humans can recognize, acknowledge, uphold, or violate rights. "Rights" is a concept. Rights don't exist out in the natural world. Rights are a human construct. Note I am not saying that based on this, people or societies or governments can trample on anybody's rights. I am just saying that it only makes sense to talk about rights in the context of man-made societies. When you go out into nature, are you able to point out to something that says it's a "right", or something that "proves" that rights exist? No. You can't.
     
  14. Diuretic

    Diuretic Well-Known Member

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    Why would you expect doctors to work for free? Should that apply to nurses and other medical professionals? That wouldn't work.
     
  15. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    You mentioned free healthcare. Since doctors (and yes, nurses and other medical professionals) currently get paid for their services, it stands to reason that they're going to have to work for free in order to provide free healthcare.
     
  16. Ronstar

    Ronstar Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    access to healthcare is a human right.

    access to cost-free healthcare? no, that is not a right.

    however, it is most cost effective & cost efficient if we as a society treat is as a human right, and thats why I support Single Payer health insurance in the USA for all citizens.
     
  17. Maximatic

    Maximatic Well-Known Member

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    The fact is humans are moral agents, those of us with intact brains even experience empathy which informs our moral sensibilities. The fact that there are points of law on which all sane people agree is no more imaginary than paper signed by an executive. Recognition of rights to life and property can be discerned from the laws of every culture across the world and throughout history. We don't observe all this and then conclude that positive law must be causing human morality. That would be obtuse. What is sensible, and useful, is to recognize constants in moral aspects of human experience and call them natural law. That's all I mean by "natural law". Others may mean more than that by it, but I doubt anyone else talking about natural law or natural rights would exclude those observations.

    Our respective experiences of the human condition are subjective as any other perception, but the human condition itself is as objective as anything else in the external world. You experience "personal morality" and so do I. You recognize logical laws and rules of inference and so do I. With those, we can debate what the law ought to be. Among the starting points on which you and I agree there are points on which we all agree. Those are, or reflect, natural law.
     
  18. usfan

    usfan Banned

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    I disagree with the concept of 'right' as a social provision of a commodity. A collective society can provide roads, for the common good. They are tasked with providing justice & deterrence from criminal behavior. They are tasked with defending the citizens from foreign aggressors, or other enemies, foreign or domestic.
    But a commodity like healthcare, food, clothing, shelter are common needs for every human, & are survival needs. Most collective organizations (aka, govt) provide a safety net, for those citizens who come up short in their basic survival needs. But when that safety net becomes a hammock, & hordes of people rush to the dole, not contributing anything to the common good, but are leeches on the productive workers of the nation.. such a society cannot sustain itself. It will implode in massive dependency.

    The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay ... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system. ~Frederic Bastiat

    You got a mouse in your pocket, Kimosabe? What you mean, 'We?' If you mean, 'because we want to mooch off your labors', then what if the peasant workers rebel, & drag you to the guillotines?

    It is also very simple, & quite common, in the history of the world, for the working, producing classes to rebel, & throw off the shackles of bondage from the moochers & looters who exploit them.

    Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.
    ~Frederic Bastiat

    And, what if 'WE' decide we DON'T want to give everyone free food, free healthcare, free housing, & every other kind of 'free stuff!' promise that the exploiters of the working man are doing, & have been doing for decades? What if WE elect some abrasive clown to tear down all the 'free stuff!' lures that only destroy production, prosperity, & self respect? If that is all we need, then 'we the people' can say just that.. & it appears we did.
     
  19. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    What would be an example of a right being taken away. If I have a "right" to water and you shut off the water to my house for nonpayment, is that what you are referring to, or if I had a well, and you decided to plug it? I'm not getting what you mean by taken from you.
     
  20. webrockk

    webrockk Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    lol. the entirety of 'political ideology' is anchored in philosophy. all of it.

    a wild bear does not possess the reasoning capacity to understand philosophical constructs, much less the principles of Natural Rights and Natural Law.
     
  21. WAN

    WAN Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So...if a bear tries to eat you, is it violating your right to life?
     
  22. Ronstar

    Ronstar Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    yes, but he cannot be punished for it

    however, we do often put down dogs that bite humans
     
  23. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Then why are you here?
     
  24. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    I guess you can always make your own string to tie around your own tooth, and then tie the string to the doorknob.

    If you need somebody else to slam the door shut, that might cost some money.

    Let's say that the hospital near your house decided to close its doors and reopen as a taco bell franchise. So you're driving to the next nearest hospital when you hear an announcement on the radio that the place has closed it's doors as well in order to open an IHOP restaurant. So you keep driving, and every ten minutes, there's another announcement on the radio about another hospital deciding to get out of the healthcare business, and going into some other business. A Denny's here, further down is another hospital that is being renovated to become a kentucky fried chicken restaurant.

    At what point do you get angry and shake your fist at the radio screaming "access to healthcare is a right, dagnabit!!!!" and then when the lady working the drive-thru intercom at a newly opened Jack in the Box asks you if you'd like fries with your burger, you scream "To hell with the damn fries! I want my gall bladder removed, and I mean I want it removed now!"

    And I have pointed out time and time and time again that if you guys who support single payer health insurance want it, then pool your money together and do it. Stop telling me you want single payer health insurance because I don't want it. You guys can do that without me, right? I'm guessing you really don't want it all that badly because I've been hearing this song and dance since Hillary was a porkable looking first lady, and still you guys drag your feet. You guys are like a crackhead I know who keeps saying he's going to stop tomorrow, yet tomorrow never comes.
     
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  25. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    So you're actually saying that no government has a rational/logical right to exact any taxes from anyone? :roflol:

    Think next time.
     
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