Is access to health care a basic human right: or a privilege?

No more than I you. You made the unfounded claim. I simply responded in kind.

 

Those passages are not about optional voluntary charity. They are requirements/commands.

 

Except they are not unfounded.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/leaving-canada-for-medical-care-2016-post.pdf

International Survey of Older Adults Finds Shortcomings in Access, Coordination, and Patient-Centered Care

U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective

 

It's not so easy to compare the US with Canada or Europe, read all the links provided in this thread so far, and all it's done is reinforce my belief in the old "tripod" theory - healthcare can be universal and of high quality but that will make it prohibitively expensive ( going to that now in the US) or it can been universal and inexpensive but that will greatly degrade the quality or it can be inexpensive and high quality but then forget universality. IOW, you can pick two of the three - universality, quality, and affordability but you have to sacrifice one.

Vermont and California were trying to do it all and ended up just folding. America practically provides much of Europe and Canada with a defense for free, but not in an American state. Complex problem for a complex country.

 

I agree with you. The basis for unregulated capitalism is greed. America currently ranks about 17th in the world in terms of the quality of its healthcare delivery system, last among developed nations. It was was interesting that Cuba was mentioned. We are ranked barely above Cuba. I believe helping the indigent is a Christian responsibility whether it's done ourselves or through someone or something else. To simply say "let those people die because they don't deserve to live" is unacceptable.

 

who says that?

 

To my knowledge the single payer healthcare system signed into law in MA by Republican Mitt Romney is working fine.

 

YOU DO when you refuse to help them.

 

Please show the post where I said ""let those people die because they don't deserve to live" or apologize.

 

Please show me how you have demonstrated a caring attitude towards the needs of the poor and a willingness to do anything about it.

 

Please show the post where I said ""let those people die because they don't deserve to live" or apologize.

 

All the data available shows otherwise. All of these other countries I am talking about provide universal health care for significantly less cost per capita than the US and significantly better quality in terms of health outcomes for its population than the US.

Some people confuse expensive and cutting edge for quality. It is like buying a car that has all the latest electronic gadgets but has an engine made of rusting tin and thinking you have a quality product. It is a shame that the US can spend so much money on health care and yet have a large percentage of its population having health care that is not much better than that provided by tiny poor nations. And that has spin off effects onto education, employment and crime.

Health expenditure per capita | OECD READ edition

OECD health at a glance for all major health metrics.

 

Romneycare is NOT single payer - it was a precursor to Obamacare because it had a mandate too but neither of these systems is single payer. It means just that, one payer and that's the taxpayers.

 

Agreed.

Essentially correct. The term single payer means the government is the single entity that pays the doctors, hospitals, clinics, pharma companies, etc. for health care, but ultimately it is the taxpayer that pays for it.

 

You are trying to say single payer is good for national health. but that is an iffy proposition - what were these stats like before these countries implemented single payer and you could say it is preferable to get a MRI in less than eleven weeks, the average time you have to wait for one in Canada.

Yes, if you are stuck under single payer, the quality of healthcare does suffer and you kill off any innovation. All those Brits stuck in wards packed in like sardines? The real father of the Canadian system is screaming for reform and for reform now:

"Father" of Canadian Health Care Admits its a Failure - Civitas Review

The only reason it lasted this long was because Canada had "extra" services plans for sale that weren't universal. as did the UK.

 

No country in the world has as ready access to quality health care as the U.S. The free market made it that way. Socializing it will destroy the ready availability of specialized diagnostic tests and treatment.

Healthcare is not a "right". It is a privilege that must be paid for...by somebody.

Just like lunches, there is no such thing as free healthcare.

 

All the metrics suggest that even if single payer universal health care is not perfect, it is more affordable and provide better health outcomes than the current system employed by the US. I don't know if a single payer system will be successful in the US. But something needs to dramatically change and I cannot see more privatization as making any impact on the health outcomes that are currently the problem in the us.

I'm not sure why MRI wait times is a better measure of a health system than things like life expectancy, infant mortality, rates of chronic disease, etc. But if that is how your value system works then I guess you got what you paid for.

 

We are always looking at white socialism and not other socialistic countries where the failures are even more total than they are in the white countries, who cannot deliver what is promised. The doctor under socialism now becomes a government employee and must tell his fellow citizen that he can only do what the authorities allow him to do and that he himself is not so well-paid anyway. Socialism is evil. Some Fox commentator tried to say that Cuba had a world-class healthcare system under communism. Cuba is a racist communist pit as poor as North Korea and you are lucky to find water clean enough to drink and more than a couple of eggs a month--even potatoes are rationed to a handful a month. Yet Cuba just in our lifetimes was the richest country in Latin America and had a per capita income comparable to Europe. I suppose the Fox commentator would be happy under another Stalin, the master of state-run everything.

 

Failed socialism occurs for the same reason as failed states of other ideologies. Poor leadership and governance. I'm not sure what race has to do with this. Are you saying that because there are a lot of Mexicans in the us that single payer health care in the US would look more like Venezuela than Canada?

 

It's a sad state of affairs when people consider possession of assault weapons to be a human right but not universal access to healthcare free at the point of delivery. Even sadder when it's Christians espousing such a viewpoint.