Should healthcare be a right or a privilege?

Currently Americans pour a huge amount of money into healthcare each year, yet we seem to be the sickest country in the Western world while claiming to have the best healthcare available.

Are Americans being fleeced by the medical and pharmaceutical industries?

Should medical care be a right and not a privilege?

Most Western societies provide healthcare for there people and they don't spend nearly what we spend and they are not as sick as America is.

Many of you will wish to debate Obamacare, I'm not a fan as I think healthcare should be a right. You should not be forced to buy crappy insurance that doesn't really help you.

Whats your opinion ATS?

reply to post by LDragonFire


It has nothing to do with right or priveledge.
A healthy populace is essential to a healthy society.
A healthy society is essential to the development of the individual.
The development of the individual is then essential for the cause of liberty.
And, liberty is the root of the development of society, body and soul.

This has got to be one of the dumbest questions ever asked on this web site.

Health care should be a right. Period.

reply to post by LDragonFire


A right imo because they poison the food, water and air.

It should be, along with education, one of the primary (most important) focuses of a civilized country.

Free healthcare should be one of the necessary characteristics of a modern society.

it's a privilege, as well as education, as well as voting as well as your life!

you are not entitled to anything, you must earn what you want in life.

Nobody said life was easy although people want it to be.

Healthcare is the responsibility of the individual.

If it becomes a "right" then the state could stop you from that extra glass of wine, that pinch of salt, that cigarette, that soda, that steak tartare.

Originally posted by beezzer
Healthcare is the responsibility of the individual.

If it becomes a "right" then the state could stop you from that extra glass of wine, that pinch of salt, that cigarette, that soda, that steak tartare.

It is not a right yet we have sin taxes in all states.

A priveledge.

Nothing should be our right, other than the air we breathe.

This is what is WRONG with the world! Everyone thinks everything is their "right". No! Everything should be earned. Its not my right to free money...oh wait...some people think so. We need to work hard for every dam thing we have. Including healthcare. If we ate right, we wouldn't have all these problems in the first place.

I can't wait for the world to implode on itself and things go back to the way of life in 1600. Maybe people would have some appreciation and not be leaches. Work? Whats work? Most people don't even know anymore.

Originally posted by beezzer

If it becomes a "right" then the state could stop you from that extra glass of wine, that pinch of salt, that cigarette, that soda, that steak tartare.

Oh wait...I thought that's what bloomberg was doing here in NY?

reply to post by LDragonFire


Healthcare for Profit should be classed as a Crime Against Humanity.

Judging a Quality of Life , by the size of your bank balance , is a Shame the US cannot hide.

Cuba has a better quality of life.

Just for definitions...something cannot be a "right" if it involves making someone else to provide it for you.

A "right" is more properly something that the government should not be able to take away.

Should healthcare be a right or a privilege?

The power of life and death as with all things in this country you get what you pay for, and when someone else pays for you, it aint gonna be what you want.

a right: government care
a priviledge: Blue Cross Blue Sheild/Aetna

You must choose but choose wisely my choice has always been private care.

Originally posted by neo96
Should healthcare be a right or a privilege?

The power of life and death as with all things in this country you get what you pay for, and when someone else pays for you, it aint gonna be what you want.

a right: government care
a priviledge: Blue Cross Blue Sheild/Aetna

You must choose but choose wisely my choice has always been private care.

Yet you have stated on ATS you are wealthy so this makes perfect since for you, however the other 99% who live in this country can't afford the care you can afford.

Also what incentive does a for profit healthcare industry have to cure anything? Why would they want to cure cancer or Aids when they can make a fortune giving a person drugs the last decade of there life? How long has it been since the medical industry cured anything?

It's not a "right." Rights don't compel other people to do anything for you. You have a "right" to free speech. No one else has to provide it for you.

As Rand Paul says, if you make healthcare a right, you create a slave class of people who can be compelled to provide that healthcare for you.

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It's not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery.

It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.

I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care, You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.

Our founding documents were very clear about this. You have a right to pursue happiness; but there's no guarantee of physical comfort, there's no guarantee of concrete items.

I had to use several sources to pull together the full quote. Here's one source.

reply to post by LDragonFire

Also what incentive does a for profit healthcare industry have to cure anything? Why would they want to cure cancer or Aids when they can make a fortune giving a person drugs the last decade of there life? How long has it been since the medical industry cured anything?

This is what many people do not understand when it comes to healthcare. Healthcare works because it is a profit based model more people are paying in to that system than using it hence the profit part.

Now since the average person can go 10,20,30 years without ever needing that insurance they are paying for those who do, and from that profit they develop new drugs, better equipment, and practices that benefit the end user.

Without that profit there would be no antibitotics,nuclear medicines that in some cases cure "cancers" and produce the technology that have saved millions from cancers, and that most loved birth control pill.

All due from profit now take the government version of medicare and medicaid what the hell have they done except live off of private medicine breakthroughs.

Why is it called healthcare anyway? It has nothing to do with health. It's all about money.
If it had anything to do with healthcare then it would have something to do with health
instead of just moving money around. Doctors would be healers instead of shills for the
pharmaceutical companies. They would prescribe the best medicine for you instead
of synthetic drugs with a million side effects.

Originally posted by schuyler

As Rand Paul says,
I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care, You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.

Wow, Rand Paul is a very stupid man.

Look at the top rated countries in the world, most have Universal Healthcare, and no door beating down occurs.

When a citizen consults with his Dr. and the decision is ...his house, or his life.

That is a Faulted System.

The reason for universal healthcare in the UK was not some sort of euphoric idea of a healthy populace but the government finding out that after ww2 that ill people don't make good workers/soldiers/tax payers so they worked out that spending some money ensuring that they could get every last penny in taxes/more soldiers quicker should another world war appear and so we get taxed a bit more than in the USA but we don't have to worry about the cost just on getting better so we can get back to earning more taxes for the system