The Right to Health.

[peter]

Is health a right that all people should have access to at a cost borne by the state, or is it a comodity like any other that people should have to pay for when the need to restore it arises.

The free health service of the UK has been the envy of the world, but as it has become increasingly expensive to fund [in the face of an ageing, growing and increasingly unhealthy populace] the pressure has been mounting to re-privitise [either piecemeal by stealth in the NHS itself, or openly in the provision of private facilities] large swathes of health-care in the country.

David Cameron has in the last few days made pledges to the people that he will provide 'seven-day a week access' to a GP, whether the doctors like it or not. As the people of Scotland will confirm, Cameron is adroit at tieing one promise to another, and my bet is that the much vaunted seven day a week access will come tied to the introduction of charges [minimal at first, but rapidly rising once the idea is in place] levied for seeing your doctor. This will be the first step in the actual practice of charging the patient for his/her consultation with their doctor, and will effecively sound the death knell for the health service as we know it.

It is a fact that the health of the nations teeth is now worse than it was thirty years ago when dental treatment was free, as are currently doctor and hospital services in the country, and this decline is due in no small part to the cost of dental treatment, which is above many peoples means. But the question remains - do we have the right to expect our country to bear the cost of our [often grossly unhealthy] life-choices, or should we be be prepared to 'stump up and pay'.

[Orlion]

Is health a right that all people should have access to at a cost borne by the state, or is it a comodity like any other that people should have to pay for when the need to restore it arises.

Neither. Health is a condition that has variables we can control and a lot we can not...quite a bit we can not. To say health is a right is like the man in the Stephen Crane poem (quoted from memory):

A man said to the universe, "Sir, I exist!"
"But that does not create in me a sense of obligation"

The free health service of the UK has been the envy of the world, but as it has become increasingly expensive to fund [in the face of an ageing, growing and increasingly unhealthy populace] the pressure has been mounting to re-privitise [either piecemeal by stealth in the NHS itself, or openly in the provision of private facilities] large swathes of health-care in the country.

It is a fact that the health of the nations teeth is now worse than it was thirty years ago when dental treatment was free, as are currently doctor and hospital services in the country, and this decline is due in no small part to the cost of dental treatment, which is above many peoples means. But the question remains - do we have the right to expect our country to bear the cost of our [often grossly unhealthy] life-choices, or should we be be prepared to 'stump up and pay'.

People also do not have the right to not face the consequences of their actions. This is another aspect of life which can not be avoided, and if you try to break this universal law in one area, it will just manifest elsewhere.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I don't think healthcare can be construed as a right. I've always thought of it as a social obligation, meaning society is obliged to look after its helpless members to the extent possible as dictated by resources and expedience, but that is well short of a right. Ultimately your health is between you and your maker.

[Vraith]

It's not inherently a right...
Then again, almost nothing is...
So, it becomes a different question...
Is the world a better place if everyone has access?
Yes.
Everything else is just disagreement about who we're willing to let die, and
why.

The U.K. and other similar systems have their problems.
But the U.S. system has its problems, too. And ours are worse.
There surely exists a hybrid way of doing things that is better than both...but good luck getting it done.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

As Vraith notes, just like education it is in a society's best interest if everyone has access to quality health care but that doesn't make it a right. The list of things which are rights is actually quite small: you have to right not to be assaulted, injured, killed, or otherwise violated by someone else...you have the right to own things and not be subject to someone else taking those things from you by force or stealth...you have the right to live your life as you see fit so long as your choices do not violate the rights of someone else...I think that's pretty much it. Everything else is a favor extended to you by those who are voted into power and who ultimately enforce their rulings by gunpoint.

If health care is a right but you choose not to use that right and subsequently make someone else sick did you violate their rights? Wouldn't that constitute a crime of some sort? Do we really want to go there?

The main problem with the United States' health care system is not quality but cost. List the primary causes of those rising costs and deal with them if you want to resolve the major problems here.

People who choose to become doctors do so in order to help people (although I will grant that some do it merely for the prestige or the money). You can't force a doctor to see as many patients as possible, though. In fact, you can't force a doctor to see any patients if they don't want to--they have the right not to practice medicine if they so choose.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

It's not inherently a right...
Then again, almost nothing is...
So, it becomes a different question...
Is the world a better place if everyone has access?
Yes.
Everything else is just disagreement about who we're willing to let die, and
why.

The U.K. and other similar systems have their problems.
But the U.S. system has its problems, too. And ours are worse.
There surely exists a hybrid way of doing things that is better than both...but good luck getting it done.

I'm a fan of the French system over the UK's. They seem to be better at socialism than most places.

[Cail]

Positive rights aren't rights....They depend upon others in order to be exercised, rather than require the non-interference of others in order to be exercised.

If health care is a right, then doctors are slaves.

[SoulBiter]

Excepting health issues that are self imposed, healthcare as a 'right' or even an obligation is one of those things that are hard to quantify. If you are born with good genes, you have won the Healthcare lottery, so to speak. If you are born with bad genes you definitely lost the healthcare lottery. Is that your fault?

But is it societies obligation to provide you with healthcare? I think minimally, yes. Just as with bad genes that have people born with autism of different sorts, society spends resources to make sure these people have jobs and opportunity and are not left to fend for themselves.

For sure, the cost factor needs to be addressed. In the US you can go in for a minimal procedure that anywhere else in the World might cost you 2,000 dollars and yet when you total up your cost for the same thing in the US, you might be paying out of pocket 2,000 with the insurance having to put up another 25,000 dollars. When my son had an appendectomy the cost was around 25K...... crazy. Yet compare with other countries below.

[wayfriend]

BTW, this topic is about the Right to Health Care. Which is distinctly different than the Right to Health.

The Right to Health is just the right to be as healthy as you want to be. Which seems trivial ... until the guy next door is doing something that gives you cancer. ... until you get fired from your job because your employer found out you have a heart problem. ... until Amazon charges you more for medical texts than it's other customers because Big Data says you see a doctor a lot. Etc.

SoulBiter is right about minimum levels of Health Care. I would add emergency medical care to that category - it should be provided to everyone, and someone who denies you this for some reason should be punitated.

[Ananda]

I wouldn't want to live in a society that didn't look after each other and health care is part of it. There is the saying that you create the world in which you live, and here we choose to live in a place where we care for each other. I know our family pays more in taxes for healthcare and the social safety net and so than we get in return, but who knows what will happen in the future. Accidents happen and diseases come and we all grow older.

If people want to see it as an investment or as a benefit to themselves, they can always look at it as an investment in society. We all live in it, so making it better even at a higher taxation is in our enlightened self interest in my opinion.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

You only have to hear the Russian folk tale about the mother throwing her infant to the wolves to save the family once to understand all there is to know about healthcare. Taking care of the sick and helpless is part of what it means to be a society, but it isn't the only part, nor the most important. Perhaps someday this will change, but as of this moment we cannot promise everything to everyone and mean it. In fact there is a fiscal iceberg lingering out there in the dark for the US, and either we make some tough choices about what direction to take regarding who is going to get what, or the ship itself will go down.

[Cail]

You only have to hear the Russian folk tale about the mother throwing her infant to the wolves to save the family once to understand all there is to know about healthcare. Taking care of the sick and helpless is part of what it means to be a society, but it isn't the only part, nor the most important. Perhaps someday this will change, but as of this moment we cannot promise everything to everyone and mean it. In fact there is a fiscal iceberg lingering out there in the dark for the US, and either we make some tough choices about what direction to take regarding who is going to get what, or the ship itself will go down.

This.

While there's a strong economic case to be made for providing a minimal amount of health care to the populace (and a case I agree with), but that doesn't make it a right, nor does it make anyone a bad person for not agreeing with it.

[Zarathustra]

The idea that I have a responsibility to take care to people who have no responsibility to take care of themselves is absurd. Why should people spend decades getting obese and turning their lungs into an ash tray, and then have a "right" to my money in order to fix it?

If the government has the power to force me to pay for people's health care, it should also have the right to force those people to live healthier lives. If you want the freedom to be unhealthy, why shouldn't I be free to let you suffer the consequences of those choices? They weren't my choices.

We don't have a health crisis because people can't afford health care. We have a health crisis because people don't take care of themselves. Granted, there are some things you can't prevent. There's the ostensible case of "the guy next to you giving you cancer." But about a million times more likely is the donut you're shoving into your own face, and the smoke you're inhaling, and the fat ass you don't get off the couch. Your neighbors or boss or Amazon affect your health a hell of a lot less than you do.

Is society better off if everyone has access to health care? Well sure, if you ignore the unintended consequences of providing it. But this argument could be used to force people to do a lot more than pay for other people's choices. Society would be better off if everyone exercised. Does that mean the government can force people to exercise? Of course not. So then why does the "it's better for society" argument work in the case of forcing me to work for another person's benefit, if we can't force them to work for their own?

Living in a society where "everyone takes care of each other" sounds like a swell idea, but it's usually "some people take care of other people." It's never everyone. There are the producers, and the non-producers. I think the producers should have MORE rights than the non-producers, not LESS. The obligation to society for those who already take care of themselves and their families should not be more than the obligation to society of those who don't even take care of themselves. Why should those who do the least be rewarded with this lop-sided sense of social justice?

Public policy should be decided rationally, not emotionally.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Priceless.

[Avatar]

It's not a right. There are no rights. But like Hashi and exnihilo said, it should be an obligation of the state, like education, because it is in the best interests of the state.

--A

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Oh there are rights all right.

[SerScot]

Zarathustra,

I appreiciate your position but emotion will always play a role in politics, well until our machine overlords come to put us in our place.

[Cail]

Zarathustra,

I appreiciate your position but emotion will always play a role in politics, well until our machine overlords come to put us in our place.

Or we're conquered by Vulcans.

[SerScot]

Cail,

Nah, Vulcans just pretend they don't have emotions when they really do. It's the planet of the Passive Aggressive people.

[SoulBiter]

The idea that I have a responsibility to take care to people who have no responsibility to take care of themselves is absurd. Why should people spend decades getting obese and turning their lungs into an ash tray, and then have a "right" to my money in order to fix it?

If the government has the power to force me to pay for people's health care, it should also have the right to force those people to live healthier lives. If you want the freedom to be unhealthy, why shouldn't I be free to let you suffer the consequences of those choices? They weren't my choices.

We don't have a health crisis because people can't afford health care. We have a health crisis because people don't take care of themselves. Granted, there are some things you can't prevent. There's the ostensible case of "the guy next to you giving you cancer." But about a million times more likely is the donut you're shoving into your own face, and the smoke you're inhaling, and the fat ass you don't get off the couch. Your neighbors or boss or Amazon affect your health a hell of a lot less than you do.

Is society better off if everyone has access to health care? Well sure, if you ignore the unintended consequences of providing it. But this argument could be used to force people to do a lot more than pay for other people's choices. Society would be better off if everyone exercised. Does that mean the government can force people to exercise? Of course not. So then why does the "it's better for society" argument work in the case of forcing me to work for another person's benefit, if we can't force them to work for their own?

Living in a society where "everyone takes care of each other" sounds like a swell idea, but it's usually "some people take care of other people." It's never everyone. There are the producers, and the non-producers. I think the producers should have MORE rights than the non-producers, not LESS. The obligation to society for those who already take care of themselves and their families should not be more than the obligation to society of those who don't even take care of themselves. Why should those who do the least be rewarded with this lop-sided sense of social justice?

Public policy should be decided rationally, not emotionally.

Good post Z. I agree with much of this and that's why in my post I said, "excepting self imposed health issues". There is no good answer to those that do little to nothing to keep themselves healthy and in many instances spend their entire lives doing exactly the wrong things. However it still goes back to the cost component. If healthcare was 70% cheaper than it is today, then all of a sudden its not such a burden to society to take care of people, even those that self impose their bad health. I dont want to derail this into yet another ObamaCare thread but I would have liked to have seen the govt try to deal with the 'cost' component, not by sharing cost across everyone but by actually lowering the cost of healthcare that is so much more expensive here than it is everywhere else. Not by a little, by a lot. If we deal with that, most of the rest of the issues we are discussing goes away.