[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.