[DonCarlitos]

Of course they do, and this is why medicare for all is a great idea. It strikes me as rather perverse that health care is largely a for-profit business and that even non-profits (like systems associated with religions) are all about cutting corners and maximizing revenues. It seems logicl to me that health care be a right.

[chmod600]

I don't think the language of "rights" makes sense here. It conflates things like free speech or religion, which are self-serve rights, with something someone else must provide.

Rights as in the Bill of Rights can be sued over endlessly in the courts. But the courts aren't a good place to sort out resource allocations, like doctor with patient.

Imagine one person suing to be a pateint of a particular doctor (perhaps a specialist with uncommonly-good outcomes). Or someone suing for frequent helicopter ambulence rides from their remote cabin in the woods.

These may be interesting questions to settle, but the language of "rights" is unhelpful.

[ppseafield]

A right to vote has to be provided. Right to an attorney is something that might haveto to be provided. Right to a jury by one's peers has to be provided. Right to appeal has to be provided. Even protests generally require permits, which have to be provided. You have the right to be treated equally based on your gender or race, which, if it is provided to one, has to be provided to all.

There are many rights which create the burden of work not only for the government but also for things like public businesses.

[shock-value]

All of the things you mentioned are in the spirit of "if this thing is available, everyone must have fair access to it".

If there is to be a vote, everyone (of age) must be able to participate. If you are to be tried, you must have representation, a jury of peers, and possibility of appeals (alternative being that case against you is dropped). If protest permitting is instituted, they must be provided fairly and expeditiously.

Equal treatment is another type of right and even more different than a hypothetical "right to health care".

The issue with health care is that it might not be available (depending on if you are in a remote area, public health circumstances e.g. strains due to a pandemic, limited specialized equipment, etc.). So a "right" to utilize it is unrealistic. At best you can posit a "right to non-discrimination of access to health care on the basis of X,Y,Z" where X,Y,Z can be such things as "gender, race, age, etc." or more politically contentiously "preexisting conditions, enrollment in insurance, ability to pay, etc".

To be clear I also favor public universal health insurance of some kind. But I also think that considering that health care is or could be a "right" is kind of ridiculous.

[vlovich123]

> "if this thing is available, everyone must have fair access to it"

Ok sounds. Good. Medical treatment is an available service. Everyone should have fair access, no?

> The issue with health care is that it might not be available (depending on if you are in a remote area, public health circumstances e.g. strains due to a pandemic, limited specialized equipment, etc.). So a "right" to utilize it is unrealistic. At best you can posit a "right to non-discrimination of access to health care on the basis of X,Y,Z" where X,Y,Z can be such things as "gender, race, age, etc." or more politically contentiously "preexisting conditions, enrollment in insurance, ability to pay, etc".

To me this reads like pretty creative mental gymnastics to try to exclude universal health care from the original premise. If you're in a remote area, your access to treatment may be of a different quality/difficulty to obtain but everyone in your area will have the same difficulty.

> At best you can posit a "right to non-discrimination of access to health care on the basis of X,Y,Z" where X,Y,Z can be such things as "gender, race, age, etc." or more politically contentiously "preexisting conditions, enrollment in insurance, ability to pay, etc".

That's kind of how voting rights are today but they certainly weren't always. We don't argue as much about the poll tax or various "poll exams" anymore, but banning them at the time was "politically contentious". Something being "politically contentious" is not a good argument for or against doing something as it's really easy to generate controversy (look at the modern news landscape).

[esolyt]

> Ok sounds. Good. Medical treatment is an available service.

Which treatment? When? How often? Does "the right to healthcare" include yearly check-ups, for instance? People died from COVID in many different countries, not because they can't afford treatment, but because they need care urgently when we don't have hospital capacity. An emergency room being full is not a situation unique to pandemics, it happens more often than you think.

The comparison with the right to an attorney, while interesting, may not be completely accurate. This right is more about preventing you from being punished without a chance to defend yourself.

> To me this reads like pretty creative mental gymnastics

On the contrary, comparing healthcare to other rights is actually more of a mental gymnastics exercise. As far as I'm aware, no country defined healthcare as a right in their constitution.

Universal healthcare and Medicare for All are already popular ideas in the US. "Healthcare as a right" is not a winning message in my opinion, since it can be attacked from a philosophical and legal standpoint.

[shock-value]

To be clear I'm not saying I think it's a bad idea to have universal health coverage because it's politically contentious. In fact I'm not saying it's a bad idea at all; I think it's a good idea. I just think framing it as a "right" is bad. In my opinion, doing so diminishes things that are actual (and hard-fought) rights, such as non-discrimination and freedom of speech, religion, etc.

> If you're in a remote area, your access to treatment may be of a different quality/difficulty to obtain but everyone in your area will have the same difficulty.

It might be almost or entirely nonexistent (e.g. you live in an extremely remote area, you've hiked on foot into uninhabited terrain, you might have a rare difficult-to-treat disease that would require so many specialists as to deprive others of care, etc.). If there are situations where one might not realistically be able to get health care, why would we frame health care as a "right"? In my opinion it's a fantasy and diminishes the meaning of the word. That's why I was trying to more narrowly pin it down to "non-discrimination of access to health care" in my comment.

[mattmcknight]

> Medical treatment is an available service

It's not infinitely available and not all service is equal.

> Everyone should have fair access, no?

If people want to spend their money to buy more of it, what they perceive to be higher quality of it, or to get it sooner, they should be allowed to do so.

Universal health care means everyone gets health care, it doesn't need to mean everyone gets the same health care.

[chmod600]

Interestingly, the right to vote doesn't appear in the original constitution, probably because it doesn't fit well with the idea of natural rights.

It's a little easier to reason about a right to vote, though, because in any particular contest, votes are treated equally.

[topkai22]

There is a large on going literature regarding the distinction of “positive and negative rights” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)

Personally I’m with you- generally speaking “positive rights” do not carry the same weight as negative rights and need a different term (I propose “really good ideas”) but people with our viewpoint have been losing that battle for a long time.

[xxpor]

Because ultimately all rights are just made up. They're only what sufficient amounts of people agree to. They're all just really good ideas.

[topkai22]

My conception of fundamental human rights is based upon “what would I agree justifies a forceful intervention/war.” Without spilling far more ink then I have time for here, I’ll just say that is a very short list and guaranteed health care doesn’t meet the criteria.

Doesn’t mean I don’t society should try to provide that service, but I’m not going to support intervention in another state if they don’t.

Ed- typo

[xxpor]

I don't really disagree with that, it's just that I want to point out that list is entirely based on your personal views and not a law of physics.

[shock-value]

The way I look at it is some rights are good ideas, some are bad ideas, and some are nonsensical and unworkable ideas (regardless of whether they would be good or bad in an idealized world). Health care as a right is the last of those.

[flukus]

How do you reconcile calling something "nonsensical and unworkable" when it's a reality (implicitly or explicitly) in most of the developed world?

[shock-value]

You can’t guarantee access to a limited resource so it isn’t a reality anywhere. At best they redefined the meaning of the word “right” which I am also strongly against.

[splintercell]

Rights aren't made up is a founding principle of America, every immigrant who naturalizes has to agree and uphold this principle of rights being natural.

[xxpor]

Yeah, they said they're "endowed by the creator". Well there's no creator other than physics and chemistry. What now?

[jquery]

This. Might as well start saying well all men created equal is obviously BS so we need to stop acting like it’s true.

Our founders thought it to be a very useful frame to start with the idea of natural rights versus really good ideas.

[maxerickson]

What's property?

[xxpor]

The bill of rights includes the right to an attorney. That's a resource allocation.

[chmod600]

That can be seen as just part of the burden of charging you with a crime: the state needs to provide you with a judge, jury, and counsel.

Amd it's not the greatest example of rights-in-action if you ask me. Often such counsel is overloaded and just tries to negotiate a plea deal rather than provide a robust defense.

[xxpor]

I'm not saying we do a good job of it in practice, but it is a positive right in the BOR.

[chmod600]

The BOR ends up constantly in the courts. Do we want our medical system to be created by the courts?

[paulmd]

The solution to that is acting positively to create a system that we think is strong enough to withstand challenges in the courts.

You don't have to wait until the courts strike down your public-defender system for being wholly inadequate, for example, you can properly fund the system in the first place and then the courts won't be legislating it.

"standard of care" is the term that comes to mind. And yes, like all human systems there will be disagreements about what that standard should be, and some system for resolving those, and in a handful of cases people will receive unfavorable outcomes. The point is to act to minimize those outcomes and provide high-quality care to as many people as possible.

The alternative is having those arguments with your insurance company, and you will lose. The death panels exist, they always have, and they are held in a building with "Aetna" on the side.

[xxpor]

The current medical system ends up in the courts more than literally anything else in all likelihood.

The number 1 reason for personal bankruptcy are medical bills, and medical malpractice suits are extremely common as well.

[thepasswordis]

If you are trying to convince people to have the government gatekeep their healthcare, then I don't thinkt he attorney's provided by the "right to an attorney" are something you should mention.

[xxpor]

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything in this case other than OP's point doesn't make sense.

[centimeter]

> The bill of rights includes the right to an attorney.

You can't just show up whenever and get an attorney. You only get an attorney when the government is prosecuting you.

[MAGZine]

every human has a right to be healthy. However it is provided is fine. We, as a society, have the means to provide this.

Just because we've set up a system that profits off of people being sick should not invalidate people's right to be healthy. That's our doing.

I also find claiming some things are "self-serve rights," to be hilarious. People going to court over constituional violations. Is that self serve? Rights, especially the ones you mention are only "free," or "self-serve," as long as all parties agree to provide them for free. If someone decides that they want to discriminate against your religion, they can do so, and it is up to you to seek remedy.

So how is that self-serve? It isn't. No right is. Things are being provided for you which we, as a society, have agreed are essential. How health is not apart of that is beyond me.

[rednerrus]

This is the really insidious part: They don't have to cut corners. The government covers the majority of the sickest people. The average US citizen pays into the private pool for the majority of their healthy life and then gets handed off to the government to cover them when they get expensive. It's literally a ripoff.

[baron816]

> health care be a right

If something is a “right”, it doesn’t imply the government should just take care of everything and it should be totally socialized. One might consider “clothing” a right, but I don’t think we’d want the government to control what we wear.

I agree that government should ensure universal healthcare, and maybe a single payer system would be the correct model (though other countries have had better results with partially market driven approaches). But my belief there is based on the fact that humans aren’t currently able to make good decisions about their own health care, and government panels probably would be able to make better decisions regarding public health.

[gknoy]

> One might consider “clothing” a right, but I don’t think we’d want the government to control what we wear.

I think it would be _pretty awesome_ if freely available durable (and warm) clothing were made available to people that needed it (homeless, foster kids, etc), much the way my taxes help subsidize peoples' food costs.

There's a big difference between saying, "You have to wear this", and "We'll all pay so that people who need it can get shoes/socks/pants/jacket X times per year if needed".

[baron816]

I don’t think that would be awesome at all. Could you imagine a committee trying do decide what clothes are acceptable. All sorts of “buy American” clauses thrown in. Each Congressional district would have to have its own factory to produce one part of the outfit.

How about we have the Gov set up a negative income tax so that if you can afford clothes, you can go buy some. Or if you don’t need new clothes, you can spend that money somewhere else.

Healthcare isn’t driven by want or choice. Government committees can look at data to figure out how to distribute resources. And we don’t want more healthcare like we want more clothes.

[paulmd]

Some countries do have committes that decide exactly that. And it's a widely cherished and extremely effective social service for new mothers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_package

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kela_(Finnish_institution)

Can you imagine? A box full of useful clothes and supplies, decided by government committee, being handed out at the hospital, free of charge, so mother can relax and care for baby! What a nightmare!

[sjwright]

I don’t think is right to analogise between clothing and healthcare. Everyone needs clothes; specific needs are highly correlated with climate. While this is also true of some basic functions of healthcare (dental care being the most obvious example) most of the very expensive parts of healthcare (surgery, cancer, etc) are not similarly predictable and therefore fit the insurance model better.

And the way to make insurance model work best is to make it universal, mandatory and governed by cost efficiency rather than shareholder profit. Better still, a universal system becomes a monopsony buyer, able to assess value with domain expertise then demand and receive lower prices for drugs and medical equipment.

[MAGZine]

Where I grew up, clothing for children was tax deductible.

It was essential, so a system was put in place to serve the need.

I'm not sure why you ended up in a metaphorical pit of despair over one imagined doomsday-scenario implementation.

[sjwright]

In the UK, children’s clothing is exempt from their VAT sales tax.

(Yet another way that unusually short people can lord it over the rest of us.)

[tshaddox]

I’m not sure about clothing, but there are significant government programs to provide food and housing to people with low income.

[baron816]

Yeah, they don’t have a great reputation. Just give people money instead.

[shock-value]

> One might consider “clothing” a right

Clothing as a "right" is as ridiculous as health care as a "right", in my opinion. Though I also believe that governments should make efforts to provide both to those lacking them.

[justin66]

I think we can all agree that the terminology is the truly important thing.

[arminiusreturns]

People really need to learm the difference between negative and positive rights.

[srswtf123]

For-profit healthcare ought to be a crime against humanity. It certainly feels like it is.

[ArtDev]

In the US, its more like a mafia racket; Your money or your life. One of my favorite things about Thailand was that the hospital lobby had these pamphlets with actual prices for procedures.

The US healthcare industry is filled with criminals. They have blood on their hands and are raking in cash at a massive cost to US society.

[jquery]

Resource allocation is hard. Profit isn’t the problem. Access is. We should be spending more on healthcare as a country, not less. Guaranteed health care for everyone regardless of income level can still happen in a regulated for-profit system.

USA federal government is just in general shitty at execution. I didn’t get any stimulus checks. My unemployment I was supposed to get went to some other address I never inputted into the arcane-af website I had to use to register for unemployment. A traffic ticket that should’ve only cost me $29 ended up costing $468 because the government messed up and I didn’t want to risk getting covid going to court to protest and there was no way to appeal online. I would dread these same people in charge of my health care without at least the option of switching providers.

All that happened in the past 6 months.

If our government could start getting the basics right I’d trust them with my healthcare. Maybe MfA is a great idea but it should be expanded slowly, the way Biden has suggested.

[ArtDev]

The president od my small local hospital is paid $985,000 per year. I looked it up.

My local hospital also cuts lots of corners to save a buck. I know some nurses who work there. They understaff while they overcharge patients and play absurd games with billing.

I think this is pretty normal in the US. The ratio of hospital beds to population is unusually small for a developed country.

As soon as my kids are a little older, I am getting out of this country. I am healthy now but as I get older I get more concerned about getting caught in the US healthcare system.

[jquery]

> The president od my small local hospital is paid $985,000 per year. I looked it up.

The CEO of a small local tech company is paid $10m per year. I looked it up.

> “my local hospital doesn’t allocate resources right”

Not surprising. Resource allocation is a difficult problem. Perhaps the hospital would be better off with limits on what they are allowed to pay people like you seem to be suggesting, but I doubt it.

To me this is all fundamentally a sign the USA doesn’t spend enough on health care. I don’t have confidence price controls and nationalization will improve matters.

[john_moscow]

The unspoken thing is that current Medicare is only sustainable because the hospitals are allowed to recover the costs by charging whatever they can get away with to uncovered people.

If everyone is covered, quite a lot of money will have to come from elsewhere and it's not like seriously raising taxes to source it would get very popular.

[paulmd]

US healthcare spending is already far higher than anywhere else in the world. It's not a "quantity" problem, it's an "allocation" problem. Too much is allocated to various middlemen for profit, and generally too much is wasted on care that does not produce good returns in terms of quality-adjusted years-of-life. For example, too much is spent on the elderly and sick, and not enough on maintaining the healthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

[spaetzleesser]

US healthcare is totally overpriced. I don’t believe for a single second that they are losing money on Medicare. Maybe in some areas but not on average.

[spaetzleesser]

If only the democrats had had a little courage and ran a candidate that embraced Medicare for All. I think with Biden not embracing it they have lost a great opportunity for many years. It would be the most straightforward way to universal health care. The systems are all there, it has shown that it works and people want it. Now Biden is talking about a nebulous “public option” which won’t go anywhere. What a waste.

[dionian]

I think we can all agree that if resources were infinite there would be no need to think about charging for anything