Should healthcare be a right or a privilege?

reply to post by LDragonFire


If it is a right, then Amend the Constitution.
If it was supposed to be a right, it would be defined in the Constitution.

It is a Privilege.

The US spends the most for little return. The entire Western world provides healthcare for a Fraction of the GDP we are currently spending and they are healthier than we are.

Does the US have the best healthcare in the world?

Originally posted by LDragonFire
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?

For anyone who's Awakened, health care is a right.
(as is health which is why things like depleted uranium, GMOs, weaponized vaccines are ILLEGAL & have no place on the planet)

The banksters controlling the system are screwing us over.

We ALREADY pay for UNIVERSAL health care MANY TIMES OVER.

Except that money is being DIVERTED to TRILLIONS in bankster bail-outs
(or "extractions" as I like to call them) & the military/industrial complex.

In a healthy society, everyone of all social classes, is afforded the same healthcare.
Ailments do not discriminate against the rich or poor.
Everyone gets sick and everyone has accidents. Using healthcare as a medium for profit is at its very core wrong and abusive.

What the United States tells the rest of the world is that it is the greatest nation on Earth, where all are equal and where one can buy their way into a healthier lifestyle.

Profit driven medicine equates to no motive for its base to actually be healthy.
No direct contradiction in principle should exist in such a supposedly modern, model of greatness

Originally posted by LDragonFire

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?

How can something be a "right" if it requires somebody else to pay for it?

How can something be a "right" if it requires somebody else to do the work for you?

If one is still living in the jungles, surviving under jungle laws, then of course healthcare is 'priviledge'. Only the strong survives, so goes the barbaric jungle maxim.

Seems like those who call healthcare a priviledge are still living with jungle mentality, when they had benefitted much from society, whom had shared and pool resources to build communities and societies, leaving none behind - young or old, white or black, christian or muslim, football fan or soccer fan, in order to progress and evolve out of the jungles our ancient ancestors once lived.

The only issue societies should be concerned about with healthcare are the costs, which had been spiralling high over the years. It is ok to profit under the capitalist system, but it is ok to plunder the measly earnings of all humanity whom will need healthcare, unconscionably? Just look at the obscene profits Big Pharma made, with the near monopoly they created, profitted immensely by govt research funds/grants as well as labour - med students.

Originally posted by Tw0Sides
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.

All insurance companies should be non-profit. The primary responsibility of a publicly traded company is to return as much profit as possible to their share holders. Why should insurance companies, be anything but non-profit?

I'll answer that for the right leaning people. How would insurance companies find and keep the best and brightest CEO's if they were limited to 3-4-5 million per year? No one is entitled to that much money per year.

Originally posted by saturnsrings
No one is entitled to that much money per year.

No one is entitled the labor of another person, either. Free anything, excepting if it were part of a voluntary exchange, is slavery.

A more accurate re-wording of the OP's subject would be Should slavery be a right or a privilege? And before someone tries to refute that, the term slavery is always in relationship to self-ownership and economic freedom [the freedom to own and exchange material property]. When it's removed from that relationship or put in a relationship without any first principles or axioms it's a meaningless word.

I think it should be a right. I understand the implications, but we have the technology, the nurses and doctors, many of whom do the job because the human instinct to help people.

It's an interesting debate, but as someone who has received the benefits of national health care, it would be totally hypocritical of me to wish to deny it to anyone else.

reply to post by imherejusttoread



Slavery means the lack of self ownership. Your life and your future generations lives, which includes economic freedom, does not belong to you, in ABSOLUTE terms.

But in a society where resources are SHARED and pooled for the common good, sacrificing of that little bit by ALL, leaving one still with the lion's share of societal and economic freedom, is that slavery?

Only those whom seek to enchain mankind, profit from others, will they claim that everything in life is a priviledge, including even the air we breathe, which is perpetual and not something even manmade, as the proposal to carbon tax is explored and provened.

Originally posted by UltimateSkeptic1

Originally posted by LDragonFire

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?

How can something be a "right" if it requires somebody else to pay for it?

How can something be a "right" if it requires somebody else to do the work for you?

So using your logic it should not be a right for Americans to use the Highway system? Yet it is a right to use it and it works pretty good doesn't it? Certain taxes are collected and used towards the highway system that we all enjoy, this doesn't lead to slavery.

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
Slavery means the lack of self ownership. Your life and your future generations lives, which includes economic freedom, does not belong to you, in ABSOLUTE terms.

But in a society where resources are SHARED and pooled for the common good, sacrificing of that little bit by ALL, leaving one still with the lion's share of societal and economic freedom, is that slavery?

Only those whom seek to enchain mankind, profit from others, will they claim that everything in life is a priviledge, including even the air we breathe as the proposal to carbon tax is explored and provened.

1. I never said in absolute terms. Slavery means the absence of individual self-ownership and the absence of the individual freedom to exchange my labor with other individuals.

2. Resources are not pooled in a society for the taking. Society is simply the economic division of labor. Nothing else. So, yes, if resources are taken from one person and given to another without the prior person's consent, it is slavery. It's a claim on that person's labor.

3. Profit is just an economic term for the existence of the law of thermodynamics. Are you going to claim that because nature bides us to physics that she is enchaining mankind? I would suggest you stop looking at profit as ink on paper. Profit is anything that is desired as a good. Energy required to power your body is a good. Knowledge required to direct that energy for the best possible return is a good. All of these things are profit. All of these things are reality. They are computational. There is no escaping this.

Healthcare as capitalism...means profit driven.

Cliche, but true...Pharmaceutical companies and hospitals make exponentially more money "treating" disease than "curing" it.

You can engage in preventitive medicine, diagnose or head-off early stage diabetes when it starts...that is pennies...or you can treat late stage diabetes...billions.

Capitalism works awesome, best incentive system in the world...if only cancer got paid or cared how much you made...otherwise it has no place in the capitalistic equation...and "treating the symptoms" will always be much more "profitable" than "curing the disease".



It all comes down to that.

Originally posted by LDragonFire

Originally posted by UltimateSkeptic1

Originally posted by LDragonFire

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?

How can something be a "right" if it requires somebody else to pay for it?

How can something be a "right" if it requires somebody else to do the work for you?

So using your logic it should not be a right for Americans to use the Highway system? Yet it is a right to use it and it works pretty good doesn't it? Certain taxes are collected and used towards the highway system that we all enjoy, this doesn't lead to slavery.

Ok, let's entertain you're poor formed conclusions.

If health care is a "right" and everybody quits their jobs and demands the government supply their "right" to health care, where does the health care come from? Who performs the health care? The health care fairy?

ok daft question from a foreigner but after the being a MD could mean you could be dragged from your bed as a slave, but since the right to bear arms is a guaranteed right then you could get your nearest gunsmith woken up to provide any works required to ensure your firearm works correctly?

reply to post by UltimateSkeptic1


The above poster has another good point. The modern western world all provide free healthcare, does this mean there all slaves? If so where is the condemnation from the US?

Your right wing rhetoric is a massive fail. Please provide links to other countries that have free medical care and where there citizens all quit there jobs??

Your argument is not valid and has not happened in other countries.

Should healthcare be a right or a privilege?

It's a commodity. That's just the way it is in a free market system.
Doctors work hard to get their degree and so deserve to be paid for their work.
Pharma develops new drugs and they deserve to get paid for all the $$ they put into it.
Equipment companies deserve $$ for developing new Xray machines etc.

What motivates the doctors, phrama and equpiment companies ... more money.
The better they do, the more money they will make.

Health care in the free market system is not a right or a privilege.
It's a COMMODITY.

Originally posted by FlyersFan

Should healthcare be a right or a privilege?

It's a commodity. That's just the way it is in a free market system.
Doctors work hard to get their degree and so deserve to be paid for their work.
Pharma develops new drugs and they deserve to get paid for all the $$ they put into it.
Equipment companies deserve $$ for developing new Xray machines etc.

What motivates the doctors, phrama and equpiment companies ... more money.
The better they do, the more money they will make.

Health care in the free market system is not a right or a privilege.
It's a COMMODITY.

So why hasn't this system collapsed worldwide when most developed counties view and treat this as a right?

We spend more of our GDP than other countries yet we are among the sickest countries in the western world. Our current system is broken and doesn't work.

Originally posted by FlyersFan

Health care in the free market system is not a right or a privilege.
It's a COMMODITY.

A "Commodity" responds to the elasticity of supply and demand. Healthcare providers and big Pharma certainly have the supply end in hand, but Demand? Consumers have no control over the demand end of things. The Flu, Cancer, your appendix et al. could care less what it costs to treat it. You get in a car accident...you go to the hospital...and that is that. No...it is not a commodity...an ipad is a commodity.

Try this....treating cancer makes the healthcare industry about 200 Billion per year.

How much do you think they would earn if they found a cure? How many customers would they lose?

Try this...Imagine if the government offered just 1/2 of 1% of what the healthcare industry takes in annually treating cancer as a prize for curing it? 1 Billion dollars? Every effen chemist and biologist on the planet would scramble and get it done in a month. And it would happen in some guys basement.

But as long as the healthcare industry makes 200 Billion a year on drugs and chemo...it is never going to get done.

New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations'

A single shot could be one of the biggest advances in cancer research in decades, scientists say. But the research almost didn't happen

In the research published Wednesday, doctors at the University of Pennsylvania say the treatment made the most common type of leukemia completely disappear in two of the patients and reduced it by 70 percent in the third.

......

Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration.

The researchers did manage to get a grant from the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy, a charity founded by Barbara and Edward Netter after their daughter-in-law died of cancer. The money was enough to finance the trials on the first three patients.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Not only does it not belong in the free-market...the free-market healthcare system is keeping us sick.

The NCI has been all but defunded and the Pharma companies...puhleese...why would they fund a potential "cure"...where's the money in that?

It is NOT a commodity and has no place in the "free market"...disease does not care abuot price or wealth or employment etc. It does not care about suppy or demand. It is indiscriminate.

Originally posted by LDragonFire


We spend more of our GDP than other countries yet we are among the sickest countries in the western world. Our current system is broken and doesn't work.

Because capitalism rewards treating symptoms...long term customers vs. curing or preventing the disease...where they actually lose customers.