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Thread: The right to health care is impossible

  1. #1
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    The right to health care is impossible

    There is no right to health care because there is no moral right to steal from others for your own welfare or force others to labor on your behalf.

    But let's assume there is such a moral right. I contend it is impossible to execute.

    Such a right is what we call a positive right as opposed to the negative right to liberty. To respect your right to liberty all I have to do is nothing. It's theoretically and physically possible for that to occur.

    There are numerous problems once you start to define the right to health care. What is health care? Who decides whether a person needs health care, how much and how fast? There is no clear answer to any of these questions. The clear example such as a knife wound to the neck requiring immediate surgery or death is the unusual example.

    Respecting my right to liberty requires zero resources and zero cooperation from numerous people. Health care requires the active cooperation of many people. It involves the use of scarce resources. This fact is never addressed by advocates of the right to health care.

    So, unlike the negative right to liberty which is clear and requires no one to do anything and thus is possible, the right to health care is impossible.

    No system can be imagined where the person with the right to health care has the means to enforce his or her right.

    Yeah but Jim, even you would acknowledge that if the person had a knife wound to the neck, his need for care can be well-defined and he could legally enforce it. I can't agree. Yes, the need for care is clear but who is going to provide it, where and how is he going to get the hospital? In a system of socialized medicine, the bureaucrats will have to decide how many hospitals and ambulances there will be near you and how many surgeons too. You will have a right to care in an emergency only if the bureaucrats have chosen to make it available in advance. That's not a right. It's a possibility.

    Overall, the proponents of the right to health care rely on a government monopoly over health care to fulfill that promise. Since resources are scarce, no such system can give to the patient the right to demand a specific course of treatment at a certain time and in a certain place and up to a certain standard of quality. All those decisions will be made by the bureaucracy and no legal remedy will change that since the courts cannot repeal a law of nature: all resources are scarce.

    So, the alleged right to health care cannot exist. It is simply propaganda for socialized medicine, a system where the bureaucrats will have all the rights and the patients will have none.

  2. #2
    Unregistered Cgoodsp466's Avatar
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    Jim
    the free cheesers dont see it that way becuse of the inbreeding and teachings from the folks who spawned these non producers. You see in there eyes the Gubment is suppose to take care of them. Kind of like Joining a union only the weak and stupid benifit. Is a demorat thing so save your ink.

  3. #3
    Member run4it's Avatar
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    You're missing a major premise, John. Liberty DOES require the help of others; an entire society, even. Unless you are ONLY about your own liberty. Then the problem becomes where does your liberty begin to infringe upon my liberty? If you are free to do whatever you want, what's to stop you from peeing on my front doorstep? Should I not then have the liberty to cut off your wingwang?

    Human nature, at it's very core, requires a check on total liberty. This is why we gather into communities. This is why people smarter than you and I have enumerated what we call a natrually occuring social contract. So who gets to arbitrarily decide whether my throwing my feces out my back window to flow downhill to your yard next door? It's my liberty to dispose how I feel best, isn't it? But isn't it your liberty to live free of my infringement?

    We have community, society if you will. We have arbitrary governments to make sure that in those societies one person's liberty does not infringe upon another's. Here is where your entire argument is exposed: pure liberty cannot exist, unless you wish to return to a primal, literal strongest survive and weakest are killed setting (and I do mean that VERY literally). We have set up a governmental administrative system to make sure that this doesn't happen.

    I understand that you draw the line of 'liberty' at different places. I happen to believe that "life" is a liberty that should be cherished and universally upheld, and is something that should be promoted by that administration, and should not be apportioned only to those who can afford it in our "limited resources" reality. I understand that you don't believe this. But make no mistake: our only difference is not a matter of separate paradigms, but rather a matter of mere degrees.
    But your being a dick
    ~Wnyresident

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    Nope, my liberty is fine if you and others do nothing.

    Libertry is easy to define. If it wasn't, the left (and the right) wouldn't be scared ****less of libertarianism.

    Liberty is doing what you wish with what you own. The common law and private contracts are very good at working out any gray areas.

    My right to health care requires that lots of people spend lots of resources. No way I can control that. It's not a right, it's a bureaucracy.

    When did I sign that social contract? That's the most dangerous piece of proaganda ever invented.

    There is no social contract, never was and never will be. It's just an excuse for thugs to feedl good about pointing guns at you and con people who lack critical thinking skills.

    There's no social contract, just contracts.

  5. #5
    Member run4it's Avatar
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    You signed that social contract the second you became a lawyer, working within our legal system.

    You signed that social contract the second you drove down your street this morning, enjoying roads paid for by the public.

    You signed that social contract the second you started enjoying police protection, making sure that no one criminally impinges on your liberties.

    You signed that social contract the second you were born, for all sorts of reasons.

    Jim-O, as I mentioned above, your occupation is a gesture to the admission that we need some sort of societal representation for the administration of our lives and liberties. This IS the social contract. It is NOT propaganda, but a reality through the entire history of humans, if not all intelligent life. That you can't even admit this shows a fatal flaw to all your self-serving arguments: they so often fail to be reality-based. Again, I'll say: your day-to-day existence as a lawyer proves a need for a curb on true liberty, as well as the necessity of a social contract to ensure those liberties to each of us.
    But your being a dick
    ~Wnyresident

  6. #6
    Member Eat My Gun's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by run4it View Post
    Then the problem becomes where does your liberty begin to infringe upon my liberty?

    This is why people smarter than you and I have enumerated what we call a natrually occuring social contract.

    But isn't it your liberty to live free of my infringement?

    We have community, society if you will. We have arbitrary governments to make sure that in those societies one person's liberty does not infringe upon another's.
    Isn't forcing me to pay for another's health care an infringement on my liberty? What about my property right to keep what I've earned? What about a health care professionals right to sell his time and expertise to whom he chooses at a price he chooses?

    The "right" to health care is utter nonsense. One cannot have a right to another's labor.

    Nor does liberty "require the help of others." Doing so is nothing short of forcing one's morality on another. Compulsory labor for the benefit of another is the very definition of infringement. Liberty requires that people are free to use their resources to help whom they choose, if they so choose.

    So many people clamor about this so-called "right" to health care and their belief that it be provided, yet I've yet to hear of a single instance where those people opened their check books, pooled their resources, and made an effort to make it available to those they felt were most needy. Which, I guess, is the perfect example of liberty at work...CHOOSING NOT to use their resources to help others...


    "I won't live by rules that make no sense to me." - Evan Tanner 1971-2008

    Transfixus sed non Mortuus

  7. #7
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    Silly arguments. To make a free choice, you cannot be subject to any coercion. Plus, rights are unalienable. You can't give your rights away, you are stuck with them.

    If people would just take time to understand the founding document of the country, we would be much better off.

    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, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

  8. #8
    Member Eat My Gun's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by run4it View Post
    You signed that social contract the second you became a lawyer, working within our legal system.

    You signed that social contract the second you drove down your street this morning, enjoying roads paid for by the public.

    You signed that social contract the second you started enjoying police protection, making sure that no one criminally impinges on your liberties.

    You signed that social contract the second you were born, for all sorts of reasons.
    Are we really that far gone that we are willing to subjugate our God-given unalienable rights to some undefined, and legally non-existent "social contract" that really seems nothing more than a politically correct term for tyranny of a vocal minority....


    "I won't live by rules that make no sense to me." - Evan Tanner 1971-2008

    Transfixus sed non Mortuus

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    "You signed that social contract the second you were born, for all sorts of reasons."

    That's the key Freudian slip wherein you concede I am right. I cannot be bound by a contract made before I was born.

    As for police protection, when did I sign off on that? How would one disclaim police protection and get a tax refund?

    You see how silly your argument is?

    Consider this "argument".

    If you vote and your candidate wins, you can't complain.
    If you vote and your guy loses, you can't complain becasue you played the game.
    If you don't vote, you can't complain becasue you could have voted.

    Again, choice means a real choice, not just one inescapbale choice.

  10. #10
    Member buffy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Ostrowski View Post
    My right to health care requires that lots of people spend lots of resources. No way I can control that. It's not a right, it's a bureaucracy.

    When did I sign that social contract?
    We also cannot control the lives of the poor who ultimately qualify for tax-supported healthcare. For example, tax-supported healthcare is no respector of person, the chain-smoking obese (disabled) couch potato is entitled to the same tax-supported healthcare as the poor single pregnant girl who is following a wholesome lifestyle for her unborn child. Both scenarios require extensive healthcare, but, the latter will have positive outcomes, whereby the former is a black hole.

  11. #11
    Tony Fracasso - Admin
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    Where would the limit be drawn on how much health care one is entitled to?

    I know a few people who are chronically always sick. It's always something that effects "work" but never seems to effect anything else. Just "work". Do you pay so they can have constant testing that never finds their aliment? Any test they want no matter what the cost is?

    What about the child who wants their parent hooked to any machine or device to keep them alive as long as possible? Even when the parent is senile and lets say in their 80's or 90's? Hook them up until the bitter end? KNow what I mean? Where would the limit be if you have people believing they are entitled to it?

  12. #12
    Member Eat My Gun's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffy View Post
    We also cannot control the lives of the poor who ultimately qualify for tax-supported healthcare. For example, tax-supported healthcare is no respector of person, the chain-smoking obese (disabled) couch potato is entitled to the same tax-supported healthcare as the poor single pregnant girl who is following a wholesome lifestyle for her unborn child. Both scenarios require extensive healthcare, but, the latter will have positive outcomes, whereby the former is a black hole.
    More good arguments against tax-supported health care...


    "I won't live by rules that make no sense to me." - Evan Tanner 1971-2008

    Transfixus sed non Mortuus

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    I guess its the Liberal in me that has a hard time passionately getting behind issues for which the main objective is to deny health care for children.

    Yes, I'm using the children card.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Ostrowski View Post
    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, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
    The above is the foundation of how we should be living.... Note it reads that we have the unalienable right to PURSUE happiness.... not be given happiness.

    And the PEOPLE have the right to alter, abolish, or institute new Government.

  15. #15
    Member run4it's Avatar
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    Your parents obligations are your own at birth. It's how we operate as a society, Jim. From the moment you are born you are taking part in our society (read: social contract) whether you have chosen to or not. You know this...why are you so dead set trying to fight against it? And since you have been able to make that choice for yourself, you have not only welcomed that obligation as your own by continuing to live in this society, but you PERPETUATE it through your chosen occupation.

    You have yet to explain how we are supposed to make sure one person's liberty does not infringe on another's. This is, of necessity, an initial curb on EVERYONE'S liberty! And again, where your "liberty" ends and mine begins, is a matter of degrees, nothing more. And your "liberty" DOES require the actions of other people...both other people to "enforce" such liberty, as well as trust in our society as a whole to restrain the ultimate extension of their "liberty".

    Your posting of the Declaration proves my point, Jim-O. For those reasons, we institute government! This is a recognization that our individual liberty is dependent upon the actions and securities of each other! It cannot be preserved without the help of others. THIS IS OUR SOCIAL CONTRACT! If only you had the wisdom of those you profess to follow!

    This is like when I had to have the conversation "does drowning hurt." Really??? You're wasting both of our time on this??? It could hardly be more self-evident.
    But your being a dick
    ~Wnyresident

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