Is health care...
 

Question and options courtesy Tom Brokaw, from tonight's debate.

I've never understood the "health care is a right" argument. I don't think being given food, water and shelter is a right, either.

I do think we're under orders to help those who don't have those things; but why characterize such things as "rights"?

PAC, in these types of threads it's better to give it a few hours before posting to make sure that exUte doesn't post something similar behind you.

This was the only question from the debate I really liked. You could tell the guys were caught off guard and had to think. There was also the one about "what don't you know and how will you learn it," but they both simply evaded that one.

The best question, IMO, was about why voters should trust either one of them to fix the economy when both parties were a big part of the problem to begin with.

The answers were predictable - acknowledge that there was enough blame to go around but the other side was most responsible.

Good counsel. I was reluctant to post, as I felt I was channeling exie, but finishing the post gave me the kind of relief that usually requires a double dose of Metamucil.

This view of entitlement contributes to our economic demise. I remember sitting in a judge's chambers having habeas writs from prisoners read. One complained his right to a color tv instead of black and white was a deprivation of civil rights. I can understand the political argument if you argue for something you find helpful to be a right then you can argue others have a duty to give it to you.

And there are matters of public healthy such as quarantines or public health risks which the public has a duty to finance so that the entirety of the population is protected. But the never ending list of entitlements makes one's head spin.

Can someone explain to this dumb hick what was meant by responsibility? A responsibility to whom?

and borne by whom?

I thought it was an interesting question, but the responsibility option gave McCain a nice out. No one wants to say that healthcare is a privilege. (Well, no one except Archaea.)

How and when did it become a right or responsibility?

I recognize we consumers of modern society consider it so, but it certainly would never have been considered such in the 18th Century. Find for me a reference thereto in the Federalist Papers. In fact it is often given, perhaps as urban legend, that George Washington was bled to death by such miracle of then modern medicine.

And before WWII, it was even considered a right or obligation. So if it magically became a right or duty, not one claimed to be innate.

How and why?

What magic creates these rights to which citizenry may make claim?

Is it useful for promotion of modern life? Yes. Are there still societies where it does not exist on anything the barest of levels? Yes.

It sounds like proponents of this societal magic believe in normative rights to create social obligations no matter the cost.

And this is at the root of the problem why I object to it being considered a right or privilege. The current cost crisis in medicine arose by virtue of government interference in the health care market, in concert with large employers. We created the escalation which now cannot be controlled. And I would support some sort of sophisticated economic intervention by government, as long as they also considered market principles or mostly market principles. Government has become, unfortunately, the largest single market maker within the health care market. We don't need another bureaucracy in the market.

I don't your argument in favor of magically creating a right which has never before existed or conceived of, but most arguments devolve down to this, "it really makes for a better life, we in society should provide for a better life for all, and it's really expensive so society should provide it."

A far cry from the noble arguments of Locke, Jefferson, Adams and the great thinkers. More in line with the socialists, some of which will not grace my lips.

For me, a right is few and far between. It's very basic. The right not to be imprisoned without just cause. The right to vote, to own property, to speak, to breathe.

Rights merely respect the individual and usually don't require anything of another person except non-interference.

A right to health care is now an argument that somebody owes you something, not something requiring you to exercise your own will. For me, to argue it is a right runs counter to the metaphysical definition of a right. I can't get past that.

Now I recognize we have found a right to counsel which if you are indigent means the state provides it, and perhaps one might wish to draw an analogy here. But although I understand why one gets that right and it doesn't offend me, it isn't a basic right but a more exotic right developed over time to accommodate a working to preserve a more basic right, the right to a fair trial. And there are some analogies there perhaps. But it still offends my metaphysical sense of what a right is.