[nothrabannosir]

Yes, these kind of theoretical arguments are so important and constructive when scores of people are actually in serious trouble today, in the real world.

"The police enforcing doctor's orders." Give me a break. I'm all for healthy debate but come on. This is the most inane argument I've ever heard about universal health care, and I've heard quite a few.

Sorry for not being more constructive, I just can't see this line of reasoning go anywhere useful.

[pandaman]

Theoretical? I've been living in the USSR. It's been very practical there.

[gattilorenz]

Maybe the fact that it was a dictatorship, not public healthcare, has something to do with that?

[pandaman]

I assure you, there was public healthcare in the USSR and I don't see how it's being a dictatorship has anything to do with the healthcare enforcement? You think people won't vote a representative who will want to establish mandatory rehab for drug users in the USA, for example?

[alkonaut]

> You think people won't vote a representative who will want to establish mandatory rehab for drug users in the USA, for example?

I don't think people think of that as healthcare but as a sentence for doing something criminal. Just like we lock insane murderers up and force them to undergo psychologicalt treatment (instead of sending them to prison which is often legally dubious if someone is clinically insane) that kind of rehab is basically treatment forced on someone for committing a crime, not some part of a public/universal healthcare program. Separate topic.

[pandaman]

Drug use is not a crime in general (there could be some circumstances making it one, I am not a lawyer, but let's take some legal drugs, like alcohol). Rehab is a health institution, people go there voluntarily and on their own dime all the time. In the USSR people suffering from alcoholism (a health condition, addiction to alcohol) were sent to rehab involuntarily. Do you think this is possible only under a dictature and the people of the US won't ever support such a measure? Before you reply, I'd like you to consider that people of the US had banned alcohol in the Constitution at one point, not so far in the past.

[alkonaut]

> In the USSR people suffering from alcoholism (a health condition, addiction to alcohol) were sent to rehab involuntarily.

Yes and dissenters were sent to labor camps involuntarily... I don't know why we are talking about a communist dictatorship here when we are discussing what would/can take place in a liberal democracy. The difference between a liberal democracy and a state that isn't, is that all measures that limit personal freedoms (such as mandatory basic education or whatever it might be) is subject to a democratic process.

> I'd like you to consider that people of the US had banned alcohol in the Constitution at one point, not so far in the past.

I don't consider it impossible that alcohol would be considered illegal in 50 or 100 years in the US. But I do find it very unlikely that some kind of forced treatment would be imposed on someone for an addiction that is not illegal in, in any country that is supposedly a liberal democracy. In fact - I'd probably hesitate to even consider that state a liberal democracy then, and the whole issue disappears (because as I explained above - we are only talking about liberal democracies here, and a US where people are sent to forced rehab without doing something illegal would not be a liberal democracy anymore)

So to be very clear: please don't go to the slipperly slope argument to suggest that public and universal healthcare in a democracy somehow ends up in involuntary treatment of law abiding citizens (Again vaccination possibly excepted).

[kgene]

I lived in the USSR too and I'd seen plenty of drunks on the streets, and people dying from alcoholism but I don't personally recall mass forced rehab incarcerations.

This argument against government-funded healthcare focuses on anecdata at best. And not very reliable.

[pjc50]

Already happens. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/27/mandat...

So the US manages to have mandatory rehab without public healthcare. The two are really not related.

[pandaman]

You are not the first one to use this argument. Somehow you believe is that if government can do something without public health care it means it won't do it with public health care for sure. Did I understand it correctly?

If so, let's try it on some other topic. E.g. "Government is already wiretapping and spying on citizens communications so providing public Internet is completely safe and in no way government is going to be spying on it!". Does it work for you?

[AsyncAwait]

Ugh, that doesn't normally happen in Western Europe, but if your argument is that you'd rather see thousands of people not receiving healthcare than an odd incident where someone was forced, then I am not sure you have your priorities straight.

[colde]

And perhaps that viewpoint has skewed your outlook somewhat. I haven't seen anything close to that nightmare scenario in Denmark, and indeed the rest of Scandinavia. What comes closest is taxing unhealthy food, which i tend to agree with.

[crummy]

Do the police enforce doctor's orders in the USSR?