Healthcare--a right or not?

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

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  1. squidward

    squidward Well-Known Member

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    who gives you the right to breathe ?
     
  2. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I know. Neither are in the constitution. Time to change the document to conform with your thinking.
     
  3. Maximatic

    Maximatic Well-Known Member

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    Sure, make it 7. Just make sure and leave a record of which question you're talking about. It looks like, this time, you're asking for an example of a natural right. I listed some in at least one response to you, a couple hundred posts ago I think.
     
  4. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    Here is a couple days worth of posts.

    Where did you give us what a natural right is? We'll wait.

    - - - Updated - - -

    The record for 2 days is posted.

    I'll ask for the 8th time.
    What is a natural right. Why can't you answer this?

    There are no natural rights or you'd tell us what it or they are.
     
  5. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Where I live, CA law provides that schools are funded by property taxes. Property taxes are also paid to the local hospital. I doubt doctors are paid.

    There are too many cooks in the kitchen. School is a local issue. I am thankful the Feds pay my medical expenses. But the state also pays for drugs to execute inmates, so having a thing paid for is no proof of goodness.

    The system needs a lot of Fixing. Trump can only take it so far. We need to keep republicans in government and with time they will undo democrats laws and install good laws. Or banish the terrible laws Democrats fell in love with.
     
  6. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    No one.

    My brain, in conjunction with my lungs. What's your point?
    Take either one away, and the breathing stops.
     
  7. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    OK. Nothing.
    94 pages, I'm not gonna search for something you never posted. This is only the 2nd post I've seen of yours in this thread.

    Point to it. Or restate it. It can't be that many words so it can't be to tough to post again. If you did in the 1st place. You must still remember what you posted.
     
  8. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    I've already rebutted this fallacious counter argument. Haven't you anything new to add to the conversation?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Perhaps you should review the edited response. I know you have reading comprehension issues, but I postulated that you're probaly lazy as well. That is now shown to be likely.
     
  9. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    The preamble to the constitution explains the concept of natural rights. The bill of rights is a brief listing of natural rights.

    And of course the declaration of independence is a declaration of war due to the colonists being denied their natural rights.

    Is that pointy enough for you?
     
  10. Maximatic

    Maximatic Well-Known Member

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    Alright, since natural means not man made, and right means entitlement, a natural right would be an entitlement that is not man made. Further, a right is an entitlement to have something or act in some way. As an entitlement to action, a right could be any possible action one could rightly(this can mean legally) make. As such, a question like "what rights does a person have at a given time" is a senseless question because the number of rights a person has at a given time is potentially infinite; it doesn't make sense to ask for enumeration of them. The idea of rights is only needed once we start limiting them. Recognizing a right of one's own is like noticing "this is something that is fine for me to do, fine with everybody". We limit rights because we all want to enjoy the world instead of just the strongest among us enjoying the world. Since people naturally tend to find violence pain and misery undesirable to experience and witness, actions that harm people tend to be strongly regarded as wrong by people. When you have many people together with the same extremely low opinion about killing a person(so low that they would have a hard time laying back and saying "oh well" when they see it) you have a law against murder. All laws against things that are obviously wrong in every society are natural. All the rights we all have left after we account for all natural law are our natural rights. It doesn't make sense to enumerate the natural rights, but we could, roughly, enumerate natural law in broad categories. They would be obvious things like laws against murder, battery, theft.
     
  11. cyndibru

    cyndibru Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why should even millionaires in this country not pay for their kids' healthcare?
     
  12. cyndibru

    cyndibru Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, in the original discussion, I used "assets" obviously in reference to the OP's initial description of savings.

    If we are changing the discussion, to answer your new question, where I personally would draw the line is where it was prior to Obamacare.....and even that, imo, has its issues.

    What is really interesting, to me, is that there will always be "winners" and "losers" when it comes to government programs. For example, take Medicare. How much a senior benefits depends on many things, especially what TYPE of illness they need treatment for, and that is just luck or unluck of the life draw. Need a major operation, hospital care, therapy, etc but can eventually go home? Your home and certain retirement assets are protected, even if your operation, hospital and ongoing care costs for example $500K. Have an illness such as a stroke or dementia with no hope of recovery and need care in a nursing home or Alzheimers unit, too bad. After the first 100 days, it isn't covered. So, maybe a senior lives a year in a nursing home or memory care unit at 6000 per month (on the cheaper end), and then passes away. Figure approximately 9 months expenses. Unless they had enough cash to cover it, the family would have had to sell the home and spend down any assets to cover the expenses (54K), even though that is actually much cheaper than what it cost to care for the other senior who eventually went home. Or they live even longer, and the expenses go on for several years. It often still doesn't begin to cost what some of these medical procedures etc cost Medicare, but one person is required to deplete all assets and then Medicaid kicks in (leaving nothing to any family or heirs), yet another person can get millions of dollars in health care without being required to spend down "protected" assets.

    Part of the problem, IMO, is that in our country, where people have the idea that as part of "freedom", we can opt to have any medical care that doctors think "may" help extend life, even if the percentage of success is infinitesimal, we think we are entitled to demand it, no matter the cost. And that's just not possible on the public dime. Just like it is crazy to think that people with expensive pre-existing conditions can pay the same price as healthy people for medical insurance and this will make everyone's costs go down. Just not possible. The only thing that makes any sense, IMO, for any kind of a public option, is (for lack of any better term) rationing. You cover "x" amount of things up to certain ages. Costs and life expectancies have to be factors. There is a finite pool of money, and you have to do the most good for the most beneficiaries with it. Life isn't "fair", there is no perfect solution, and there is certainly no government solution that will ever make life fair and equal across every aspect.
     
  13. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Yes, healthcare is a basic right IMO!

    If the government compels you to provide other people places to exercise their right to vote and it compels you to provide courts to uphold the presumption of innocence for other people then what difference does it make if it compels you to pay for the right to healthcare?
     
  14. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Health is a right.

    Forcing others to keep you healthy is an infringement of their rights.
     
  15. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    So according to you "forcing others" to support your right to vote for Trump is an "infringement of their rights"? :eekeyes:
     
  16. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Look, change the topic to that then.

    Clearly, and I am smart enough to admit it, when i go to the doctor, and you pay my bills, it infringes on your freedom. I am sucking off the egg so to speak.
     
  17. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    That you cannot comprehend an analogy about how others are already paying to uphold your rights is patently obvious.

    But that does not alter the FACT that there is zero difference between your individual right to vote and your individual right to healthcare. Both are supported by other people because that is how the system works.

    We the People support each other's rights regardless as to whether it pertains to voting, healthcare or the presumption of innocence.

    No one's "freedoms" are "infringed" when it comes to supporting the rights of others.
     
  18. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That is what is meant by a poor legal argument.

    I want to keep typing but realize it is futile. Let me give it one shot.

    I told you I am infringing on your rights by you being party to paying my medical bills. Either you accept this or not.

    Voting is a state right. My state did not create the law of DC that pays for medicare.

    I have a right to health. I do not have a right to health care other than men created a law. So it is a legal right but not a natural right.

    Do you believe all laws created in DC are totally lawful? Dred Scott was such a law and it later was overturned.

    One more thing. Were health care a right, it would have long been granted to all citizens. I had no rights to medicare until I reached the age of 65. Rights do not depend on age.
     
  19. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Ironic given that you cannot provide any shred of evidence to prove your own "poor legal argument".
    Just because you posted a fallacious statement does not make it true. You are not "infringing my rights" because I am already paying for your Medicare WITHOUT my rights being infringed.
    Voting is an INDIVIDUAL right. States ADMINISTER the individual right to vote and can deny it under certain circumstances, such as incarceration, but the individual right to vote is protected by the federal constitution.

    FTR your state ADMINISTERS your Medicare on behalf of the federal government that enacted the legislation.
    Utterly irrelevant since without the law protecting your rights you would have none at all.
    Dred Scott was a Supreme Court DECISION! FTR the founding fathers introduced a sunset clause for slavery in the constitution (Article V) so that it could be eliminated by an amendment and yes, it was an amendment that eliminated slavery after the civil war.
    BZZZT Wrong again!

    Rights do depend upon age. Before you are born you have no rights at all. You have to reach the age of 18 before your right to vote comes into effect. You don't have the right to become president until after you turn 35 years old. So your allegation that "rights do not depend upon age" is utterly bogus.
     
  20. squidward

    squidward Well-Known Member

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    you don't say ? Nobody granted you this right yet you exercise it ?
    How very interesting.
     
  21. squidward

    squidward Well-Known Member

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    How does being forced to pay for other's healthcare become paying for the "right" to healthcare ?
    Where's the logical proof of the "right" ?
     
  22. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    The OP already conceded that the right to healthcare exists. Take it up with him if you have a problem with healthcare being a right.

    As I stated earlier, in my opinion healthcare should be a right and given that health insurers can no longer deny coverage that makes it a de facto right even if it is not an explicit one.

    So whether or not you like it healthcare is becoming a right. Just ask all those angry republicans at GOP townhall meetings how they feel about no longer having the right to healthcare if Obamacare is repealed.
     
  23. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    How does one own anything without the gov't to grant you that legal ownership? Self ownership is your life and that's it. And I agree, we have a right to life or at least to defend it. But if that's all there is, then it comes down to might make right. Which is what I've been saying throughout this entire thread. Unless we have the legal means to replace might makes right. Because, IMO, that will lead to each individual sovereign making up their own rules and laws and enforcement of them. AKA, Chaos.

    Unless you want to live in the middle of nowhere and have no to little contact to other sovereign individuals. By all means, go for it. But I don't think that fits you, you'd need to get of the internet.

    Not sure why you feel the need to put out personal attacks. This is the 2nd or 3rd time I've ever seen a post of yours.
     
  24. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    All granted by the constitution, etc, carried out or granted via the federal government.
    And only is good for the USA. Not for individuals outside the USA, unless those gov'ts decide to adopt something similar.

    So those are legal rights.

    Natural and legal rights are two types of rights. Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (i.e., rights that can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws). Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable (i.e., rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

    As of this time in human history, I don't know of anything that is universal, except maybe, as I've said throughout this thread, the right to defend one's life. IE, might makes right. Or as another had put it, the law of the jungle.
     
  25. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    My whole point throughout this thread.
    The most basic natural right we have is the right to defend life. Basically might makes right. Which if left to each individual in the world to act on such a right, means total chaos. Unless you're able to get everyone in the world to agree on all those natural rights that one seems to think exists.

    So we make legal rights to live in a civil world.
     
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