Should healthcare be a human right?

Question

Or a luxury?

Bush seemed to think it wasn't important enough to list as a right in the Iraq constitution.

Mckenzie, I never mentioned anything about socialism. Why do you change the topic of conversation?

Answer 1

Anytime you call it a right - the "right" gets their shorts in a knot.

Yes it should be worked on as a program for health, and as another correctly pointed out we pay way too much, and receive substandard care. The arguments the right uses to "prove" it "can't" work like - waiting periods for care, and substandard care, and "I shouldn't have to pay for it" are 95% bogus. Unusual events can always be found - but they ignore the very real and tangible benefits all of us will obtain.

All of us will pay less once it's up and running.

Some will wait for non-critical care - but no more than happens now, and perhaps much less.

No more incidents of substandard care than we have now, and perhaps less.

Intangible benefits are healthier workers, less burden on the businesses who can't afford the costs, long term preventive care because you can go to the doctor without getting hit with a massive copay, and less concern about financing critical care for seriously ill family members. It's a win win situation except for the insurance companies, and the drug manufacturers.

Answer 2

Healthcare MUST be a right. There's gotta be a better way than what the state of healthcare is right now. Maybe a hybrid system where there are free private healthcare facilities subsidized by the government and privately owned clinics if you want more individualized care. The government should be subsidizing healthcare, not failing "legacy" airlines and oil companies.

Answer 3

How can we say we are a compassionate nation when we fail to take healthcare seriously.I cannot believe today I read a story of a woman dying in an emergency room because 911 wouldn't send an ambulance to take her to a hospital that would treat her.Quality and affordable healthcare is at the top of what it takes to build a quality life.We have become a very callous nation that doesn't take all human life equally.The proof is in those who talk about it but don't support the very laws needed to make this truth.I can only hope before I take my last breath America becomes the great and caring nation I was tought it to be.

Answer 4

I have often wondered why cons are so opposed to universal healthcare.
At the moment US healthcare is horrendously overpriced. We pay more than twice as much per capita for healthcare as most developed countries yet get pretty much a 3rd world product in return (worst life expectancy, worst healthy life expectancy, worst child mortality in the developed world).
The cost of most of this horrendously overpriced healthcare is born by corporations.
If we were to produce a healthcare system anything like those taken for granted in Western Europe, Australia, Japan and Singapore (hardly a list of marxist nations for those who will shout communism) the result would be a more healthy and so more productive workforce, at a cheaper cost to society in general - being paid for by consumers and producers alike.
Why would Republicans not want this situation?

Answer 5

Healthcare should only be a human right for homeless people.

Luxury? We already have a luxury-based healthcare market.

(I stopped myself from phrasing it a healthcare "system" just now, because that suddenly seemed inappropriate.

What we have is not properly a system. We market health. The industry has astonishing incentive to create health "needs" rather than health.

Such as our times are this today and age.)

Answer 6

It should be a human right!

I realize that Doctors deserve to make a living, too! But maybe services should be paid for by the sliding scale system, and not be so profit driven. That would mean that some who cannot afford to pay at all, would not have to, but those who can afford it would pay more. The rest would fall somewhere in between *sm*

Answer 7

It should be the responsibility of all civilised governments to provide education of the highest level to all, the same and the best health care to all and to defend your country, wherever you live. If they can't do that in most western countries they should move over and let somebody who can, get on with it.

Answer 8

Yes,if you can find enough humans to pay for it,because once something becomes free,the ones that benefit are the ones that least put anything into it,and in the end the ones stuck with the bill will not be the politicians,the rich or the poor,it will be the middle class,the very ones that will get the least benefit out of health care

Answer 9

Not so much a human right as a general responsibility. A great majority of Americans today don't have Health Insurance. Sadly, a bigger majority in that majority are children.


Even though Conservatives will see it as Socialism and bigger government, it is something that should be invested in by the Federal government. Even if just starting off, it's for children and minors.

Answer 10

The poor have a reasonably good health care system available to them. The rest of us may have to forgo a few luxuries in order to secure it. That fact makes it no less our individual responsibility.