Health Care: A Right or Privilege?
May 10, 2008
Do you as a person have a right to healthcare? If it is a right, then it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that you get it. If healthcare is a mere privilege, does the government have the legal right to manage how much it costs? If it is a right of the people, what is the difference between healthcare and elective medical treatment? If healthcare is simply a privilege when does it become the financial responsibility of a family to keep a child or the elderly alive?
I have been thinking on this a lot and I am simply not sure anymore. On one hand I want to believe we have a right to healthcare, but I have always held there comes a time when healthcare costs should be shifted back to families keeping someone alive simple because they don’t want them to die. I don’t often find myself in a morally grey area, but for the moment that is exactly where I am at.
To make matters even more murky if healthcare is a basic human right and the government of Myanmar is keeping outsiders from providing it, does another country have the right to invade it to set things right? Does inadequate healthcare constitute a human rights violation?
I can’t wait to hear your thoughts…
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10 Responses to “Health Care: A Right or Privilege?”
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[...] 10, 2008 Originally published at Brad’s Tiny World. Please leave any comments [...]
Excellent question. Personally, I believe health care becomes a right when a nation reaches the level of development that we have. There’s plenty of money if we stop spending hundreds of billion on stupid things like Iraq and needless foreign aid.
I simply haven’t heard a convincing argument as to why the richest, most powerful country the world has ever seen cannot provide health care to its citizens. But I’m all ears…
RHM (www.thecandidacy.com)
I feel that it’s a right currently not being provided to us. And when it comes to the point to providing healthcare conflicts with prolonging someone’s death, I believe that it should be the doctor’s choice, not the family’s, to pull the plug unless the family is willing to pay for care out of pocket. I know it sounds cruel, but isn’t it crueler to hold someone down when they are meant to leave us? If there’s nothing more the doctors can do, then it’s time to let the person go.
I would bet most of the assholes on digg screaming about sociallized medicine not being a proper american institution were screaming bloody murder when terri shaivo had the plug pulled. However little did they know that screaming to keep her alive was the affirmation that all people have a fundamental right to healthcare. If we have that basic human right then it is the responsibility of the US government to ensure that its people have access to it. if they don’t and it is a basic human right then they are grossly violating the human rights of more than 250 Million people.
[...] Health Care: A Right or Privilege? (tags: Children’s Health healthcare privilege rights) [...]
I don’t see it as being a right. People have the right to do with their personal health as they see fit:
They have the right to see a doctor or not see a doctor, they have the right to eat a dozen cheeseburgers or not eat a dozen cheeseburgers.
I don’t believe that the burden of other peoples personal health choices should be put on the tax payers.
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>I don’t believe that the burden of other peoples
>personal health choices should be put on the tax payers.
So you are saying that diseases that are inherited and have nothing to do with cheeseburgers or bad life style should bring a man to his death because he has no money to pay for the treatment, right? Wow. I bet you are a republican.
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“If there’s nothing more the doctors can do, then it’s time to let the person go.”
Not that I disagree with you but I don’t think that all the doctors ever agree on who is “hopeless”. We all know of “miraculous” case of people that doctors thought would never await again from say a coma…. and awoke. While some doctors may think someone is beyond help, there may be doctors that seek out people in desperate condition as guinea pigs: mad scientists or genius?
Also I don’t think doctors can or should take such a delicate decision in their hands.
I think that when you have a moral grey area, it’s perhaps best to realize there can’t be a simple answer to that question. Is it a right or a privilege? Perhaps both.
I do think there should be basic health rights but nothing that would then dictate what we should eat indeed I agree with the comment that : people “have the right to see a doctor or not see a doctor, they have the right to eat a dozen cheeseburgers or not eat a dozen cheeseburgers.”
However, I also do think that food plays a great importance in health. We cannot tolerate that the food industry not only poison the earth in raising crops at the cheapest cost possible. We shouldn’t allow the food industry to feed crap to people after carefully designing products so that we are addicted to them regardless of any concern for how healthy it is… or isn’t.
Tax is often the best incentive: why not tax the food industry so that it encourages it to produce better product to the market. In Europe there is a tradition for meals. In the US there is a tradition for “fast food”: snag one on the go, it’s like gas refill, and don’t think about it.
And the food industry loves that you don’t think about it. You don’t think about quality. You don’t compare products….
I am sure some will argue that the food costs would go through the roof but:
1. The food industry would find healthy things to push in your plate.
2. Perhaps we should spend more on our own refill than that of our car refill. (turning corn into ethanol is not only inefficient as hell, it’s also really bad for our health care, while good for the “food industry” at large because it’s raising the prices…)
Great post, Its causing me to rethink some things
Well, i think that it’s a right. The reason being is that we are the most powerful and wealthy nation on the planet. The government spend so much money on things that they shouldn’t and yet we have to argue whether or not they should spend money on one of the most important aspects of human life? The health of the nation and its people should be a top priority not fighting an endless war.