Is healthcare a right?

If healthcare is a right, why do people die waiting for organ transplants? If healthcare is a right, why haven’t we cured the common cold? If healthcare is a right, why do I need to have a license to practice medicine? If healthcare is a right, why shouldn’t you play in traffic? If healthcare is a right, why don’t you have ready answers for my questions? Because, if healthcare is not a right, why should it be free?

Is that how technology works? If so then maybe we should make transportation a right so that we can get those flying cars I have always wanted since I was a kid.

Believe it, or not, that is how tech works. Basically, it's a failure analysis exercise. Failure, because, at present, we have not cracked the gravity-defeating aspects of levitation, other than within a vacuum, or by superconductors, neither of which are economic, and can only break it now by controlled thrust.

You're literally saying that if we made healthcare a right that would result in a cure for the common cold.

Would you be willing to debate that?

We don't "make" healthcare a right. It either is, or is not. I suggest it is not, regardless of what is done. My transplant proposal is, at best, a present impossibility. I don't think that will last, because we may be capable of making almost every organ needed artificially, perhaps the brain excepted.

No, what makes healthcare a right is that it would be available to all without the necessity of legislating it, it is available to all without condition, and it cannot be modified, nor dismissed by but tyranny Healthcare is a personal responsibility as firmly as is the right to freedom of speech.

How exactly are you defining a right here? As far as I know a right is merely a thing (and sometimes an ill defined or abstract thing like happiness) that enough people in a society have agreed we ought to have (a subjective opinion) that the society at large tends to afford (or try to afford or profess to try to afford) to all individuals who qualify for said right.

According to the OED [II, 9, b]: A legal, equitable, or moral entitlement to (also rarely †for) something. Healthcare does not qualify by this definition because not all people have equitable access to outcomes of healthcare, such as my suggestion of patients needing transplant organs. That access outcome is NOT equitably available, is it, simply because there are no warehouses of organs needed. Simple access to healthcare may be possible, but not to an equitable outcome. And what is the point of declaring healthcare a right if we cannot deliver an equitable outcome?

 

I still argue that all rights are merely popularly held opinions about what we are entitled to. By your preferred definition there can be no rights because as every person is an individual with their own strengths and weaknesses absolute equality (or that anything can be provided for completely equitably) seems highly unlikely and certainly does not reflect our current observable reality. Certainly if there can be no rights then there can be no right to healthcare.

You may so argue until the Sun extinguishes, but I have the ultimate qualifier of the English language, the OED, in my corner, which states otherwise. Should you choose to engage another definition, that is your right, but I suggest it becomes a lonely existence.

As for your argument that individual strengths/weaknesses can override alleged rights, which is true, and is generally known as tyranny, we do have a congressionally approved, and States' ratification of the Constitution of the Untied States which first declares: "We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That declaration is a public trust that we will not severe that trust for individual gain, while allowing our freedom to gain whatever else we may choose to acquire as long as we agree to maintain that public trust, and all that follows to the end of the greater document.

That document further declares that, although there are additional rights the People embrace, they need not be enumerated in the Constitution, but, those rights must still stand by equitable access to all, without restriction of some. Healthcare, as I've explained, does not meet that criterion.

The rights set put in the constitution of the United states of America are still just popularly held opinions about what rights people ought to ge afforded. It can be amended and even ignored. We can easily declare that universal healthcare is a basic human right. Pir ability to equitably provide for that right aside. 

Just? 56 dangerously at risk men had a different idea of rights. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

We do not by "opinion" establish any right. Nor do we, by simple opinion, amend, nor should ignore, these documents. You do realize, I trust, that the Constitution has been amended but 27 times in its 230-year history, and is amended only by approval of 3/4 of Congress, and then ratified by 3/4 of the States. The attempt to amend the Constitution is made by Congress about 200 times in each of, at present, 116 congressional session of Congress. Do the math. It is a painfully difficult, not a "can be" prospect, as if we wave a wand and change it. Have a care to appreciate what we have been given, at the risk, and payment in blood, to have these documents, and the rights they ensure. But, not every whim is a right. Try to understand the difference between right and privilege. You do not have rthe right to have a driver's license. It is a paid privilege. Like the outcome, and not merely the access, to healthcare.

No.

Healthcare as in State provision of invasive and no invasive therapies, is only a possibility, relative to either State or personal affordability. 

As with most things in modern human lives, accessibility is usually dictated by affordability. 

As access to an unlimited money supply has only ever been considered a possibility and never been considered "a right", then it's unreasonable to expect that access to healthcare should be regarded as an inevitable right.

You say there is no right to healthcare.

As evidence you ask " If healthcare is a right, why haven’t we cured the common cold?"

This implies that you think "if healthcare was a right then we would have a cure for the common cold. We do not have a cure for the common cold, therefore healthcare is not a right."

We can debate this topic. The resolution would be "If healthcare was a right then we would have a cure for the common cold."

We would use the above definition for the word "right".

Do you accept or not? If so I will set the debate up.

Did you mean to suggest I disagree with you? I entirely agree with you.

That is exactly my point. Healthcare [outcome-based] is a privilege, not a right.

Yeah, good debate topic. I accept. I'm new to this, but I believe a debate can be set up with a closed-invitation to a selected member, in this case, me. If so, I'm absolutely game. We are at odds, I think, on several subjects, but you have been considerate in your dealing with me, and I hope the feeling is mutual. So, as friends [though unofficial, but I will make that invite], or at least as amicable adversaries, because I believe in opposition in all things, let's proceed.

Yes the wording implies that the rights laid out are both universal and absolute but even the founding fathers had very definite ideas about whom should benefit from these rights and it wasn't necessarily all humans. The truth is I can write any rules for my clubhouse I like and I can use the most definite language possible but it is still up to those using my clubhouse to follow the rules.

Well, as long as it's your clubhouse; your rules, yeah.

No indeed. Not my rules unless I have some way of enforcing said rules or the agreement and cooperation of all involved parties. This is equally true of larger organizations like nations. The laws of any nation derive from the mandates of any governing bodies and are only as legally binding as can be enforced by said government unless all involved parties agree. 

It can, and I will do so as soon as I am able to. I lead a somewhat busy life.

Yes, I think I see how it's done, but I'll await your schedule. Meanwhile, busy is good.

Thank you for your patience friend.

I support medicare for all/UHC, but not on the claim that it is a right.  It is merely cheaper than the private system by 50%.

Under a medicare for all system, the private taxes gets abolished.  Copays; premiums; deductibles; all of that's abolished, it's replaced with a smaller government tax, and the individual saves money in the process because the middleman (the insurance company) is removed from the system.

Have a care, my friend, to understand that currently, more than 15% of the population of the US, a pop of 330M people, is 65 and older. Within ten years, that number is expected to rise to at least 20%.

I point out that group [my group!] because we have, most of us, a split of medicare and private insurance. I hear the constant din of argument that medicare [and SS] are examples of socialism. The only people who truly believe that are people who do not understand what FICA taxes are, even though they are obvious on every paystub produced by employers. I'll make it real simple for you. I know you're young. I worked a forty-year career. In all forty years, I paid FICA taxes, and also had the benefit of my employers paying into FICA. Those taxes were continuous installment payments into my SS and medicare funding. Before retiring, over 90% of FICA contributions paid for those retirement benefits. MY money, not yours or anybody else's. So, let's not raise that fallacy again.

Currently, I pay $137 monthly as added payment to Medicare. So do others [the actually value is different for individuals because of their relative variable career incomes. I'm near the top of the scale. My supplemental, by choice and need, is $0, but would be, if I paid, $25/mo.

Are you really trying to convince me that 20% of our population [about 60M, including me] will pay half of what we currently do when an added 250M of us [the working population] are suddenly separated from their current insurance plans? Not to mention that roughly 30M of that 250M, plus those who do not work, who do not currently have health insurance are part of that add? Lastly, you claim this will cost 50% less than the current private system? Who administrates this new deal government policy, and at what cost, who currently do not exist as such? Sock puppets?

A word about that 330M population of the US. That makes us the third most populated country in the world behind China and India. The countries that your dedicated teaching staff tell you are thriving on a similar health care system as you propose are in the 20, 30, 50M population arena. Fewer people; lower costs. That does not translate well to a country going on 10X of those populations. Do you really think that does not make a difference, both in direct medical costs and administrative costs on top of that?

We agree then. 

"A right is a power or privilege that is recognized by tradition or law. Natural or human rights are inherent to human nature; they are not given by government,"

Legal rights are those recognized by government, but they can often be taken away as easily as they are given.

(I would say any right that can be taken away as easily as given, is not a right at all, privilege at best)

"All of the rights in the Bill of Rights are designed as limits on government. They say what government cannot do, not what it must do. Such limits are known as negative rights, versus the positive rights of requiring government to provide jobs and healthcare."

(again positive rights are pretty meaningless and not a right imo, privilege at best)

(natural rights to not infringe on anyone else's rights where positive ones can and will)

Rights are abstract concepts. Without humans to grant them they would not exist. As such they are neither self evident nor inalienable.