Is health care a privilege, or a right?

Question

What should we do with sick people who can't afford to pay? Let them die, so we don't have to tax our billionaires?

truthisback, you can assert a right to a fair and equal share of what society, including you, produces. That is not a contradiction: that is justice.

Answer 1

Neither

Health care is a commodity. You want some, fine go buy it.

Just keep your grubby hands out of my pocket and pay for it yourself!

Answer 2

Did the constitution guarantee death from poor health, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
I would have to glance at it again, but i'm sure that isn't what it said.
If these people in 35% tax brackets have such a problem with being taxed so much, I am more than willing to trade them for my 25% tax bracket income. any takers???

But regardless, anyone can goto the emergency room for treatment, but when they can't pay it is just 3X the amount out the tax payer's pocket when the hospital has to make it up or the government has to pay it anyway. Universal healthcare, while increasing taxes, providing healthcare for everyone, will greatly alleviate this stress caused by emergency room visits.
and lower the cost of healthcare for those who can afford it.
Even welfare recipients end up going to the emergency room to get treatment for the smallest things that cost the tax payer 3X-6X what they would have if they went to a regular practioner to get a thorn out or an ingrown toenail removed. That is 3 to 6 more people who could have obtained regular priced treatment for the same tax dollars spent. Now if you find out how many people are on welfare and have medical cards, or how many people get treated at emergency rooms and never pay,, you will see, that we are already paying enough to cover physician visits anyway.

Answer 3

In the end Health Care is one person helping another.The provider and the patient, these days.This stuff costs , so where dose it end.If some people didn't pay up nobody would have Health Care, there would be no Doctors, no Medicines, no nothing.Health Care is not free any where.The question is ,can everybody have everything Medicine has to offer.I would say no.It is just not feasible.So, what level would you accept for the poor and what for the rich?

Answer 4

It is neither. I spend my days at school teaching your retarded children, why? Is that retarded child adding or detracting from society? Each retarded child costs my school district nearly 120,000 per year in services. This money could buy a lot of lunches for the hungry. But rather than retardo's parents paying we all get stuck with the bill.

Health care is the same, if you're sick, pay for your treatment, if you can't pay die. It should be the same for my students.

Answer 5

That's a very difficult question to answer.

If we all lived like we should, eating the right foods, not smoking, getting enough exercise, eliminating unreasonable stress, etc., there would be very little disease and most health care would be for accidents. So do we have a "right" to health care for something we could have prevented? Some people would say yes and some people no. As far as unpreventable disease and accidents, if we all lived properly, the need for financial help for catastrophic disease would be so small as to avoid debate.

That makes it a moral debate then - do people have a "right" to free treatment for something they should have prevented or not? (By the way, I suffer from several preventable conditions, so I'm not speaking from a holier than thou position.)

I believe the best thing for the country would be health care for all children from birth to 18 years of age, assisted on an as needed basis on their parent's income, and after that health care paid for by insurance whose premiums would be based on one's health habits. If you choose to behave in an unhealthy way, you should have to pay a lot or forfeit the right to covered health care. If you continue to live healthily, you can get cheap coverage for unforeseen problems.

Answer 6

Health care is a commodity and the wealthy(those that work) are already being taxed to pay for it. Health care is a marketable good and service, just like auto insurance, homowner insurance, or any other goods which you must pay for. Sick people are not turned away from hospitals, regardless of what michael moore tells you.

Answer 7

The only way health care could be a right is for health care workers and suppliers to have no choice in providing it. Either the providers have a right to choose to provide or the patient has the right to health care but both of these can't be true. Health care is not a right.

Answer 8

health care is a human right. unfortunately insurance coverage and preventative care is not. and anyone can go to the ER and get care. but who pays for that is another issue. and it's not the billionaires. it's the already stretched-thin hospitals.

Answer 9

We don't let them die and we shouldn't.
Our billionaires take the initiative to create jobs and employ us.
Without the job-creators we'd be a land of workers... with nothing to do but shoo the flies away from our dusty dirty eyes

Answer 10

The irony of the situation is that we already "tax" our billionaires to pay for health care through mandatory employee coverage. One day they'll figure it out . . .

Answer 11

One cannot simultaneously assert that health care is a right and that equality is a right.

All wealth is created. That means there can be no innate right to any wealth, any product or service - that would mean a right to have someone else provide it to you, in which case you and that someone else are not equal.

You are entitled to your opinion. As we've seen in other questions you are not entitled to your own facts.

Nor are you entitled to a contradiction.