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

Your article is nothing more than a letter to the editor on an op-ed page.

As usual, your question is poorly phrased. Yes, people should have the right to have access to health care. But, no it should not be free.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

A friend who is a social service counselor recognizes the importance of people paying for his services.
He tells me the success rate in counseling is largely improved with a buy-in - people paying for his service.

Free health care means people that get sick can blame the 'system' for its failures - rather than trying to reduce their risk factors by improving their healthy lifestyle habits.

Rob

 

I believe it is a right starting at birth but requiring more participation of the funding as said person becomes financially self sufficient. Generally related to income.

A military tour of duty weighing heavily in one's favor.

HankD

 

I don't think that it is a right. Forty years ago I was faced with the prospect of buying medicine for myself that was totally out of my economic reach. I asked a preacher-boy about this and he told me to put this problem at the feet of Jesus. Let me tell you, Jesus provided the priceless medicine for me.

 

As a health care provider, I consider it my duty to provide certain health care services to everyone who I encounter that needs it, regardless of their ability to pay. I guess you could say I feel that those medical services are basic human rights.

At the same time quality health care is expensive and encompasses larger and larger areas of life that I would not consider basic human rights.

In Australia, general practice and medicine as a whole holds an interesting role as provider of services funded by the single government payer but also having the option to charge the consumer. Most doctors are involved in both the private and the public systems. If you are only in the private system, it is unlikely you will get the volume of patients needed to maintain your skills and potentially desired income. The public system is a constant battle for adequate funding to service those areas of greatest need.

I personally hate the business side of medicine and would prefer that I do my job without having to think about how much money I can either charge the government or my patients for my services. For American doctors, the insurance company would be the third source of funds. But many of my colleagues have mastered the very complicated art of medical billings, unfortunately at times at the medical expense of their patients.

With regard to having a government paid system, I think any advanced society with enough wealth should want to provide a basic level of health care to all its citizens for as low a cost as possible to its consumers. When your basic health care needs are met, not only will you have a healthy population, but you will also have a population more able to engage in education, productive work and less reason to resort to criminal activity. Health care is not like other commodities. There are very large societal incentives to wanting everyone around you to have quality health care.

 

no

 

Socialism and socialists are evil. They are basically materialists. A rich country like Cuba went to the second poorest in the world in a lifetime and clearly the government decides healthcare issues politically and represses the black majority for racial reasons. Venezuela, a country with oil reserves more vast than Saudi Arabia recently announced officially that it was very low on all medicines because the socialistic dictatorship was broke and could not pay their bills. Venezuela, the birthplace of the great Simon Bolivar, devolved into poverty in about 20 years as the oil fields were left without competent engineers. The point is that the government should not have any controls over healthcare except the obvious ones such as deal with malpractice and medical regulation in my opinion.

As for healthcare, the indigent in the USA always were given healthcare. For example, here in Indiana, the Indiana University Medical School administers the free healthcare program through a county hospital in Indianapolis. Rural Hoosiers with serious issues who cannot be covered by Medicaid might have to move to Indianapolis, as rural Indiana is largely agricultural and has another set of medical problems in attracting doctors to very small towns, etc.

The current debate is that everyone needs insurance and the left wants a socialistic solution because the left dreams of "white" socialism, not the Latin American socialism but the economic and human issues are the same under "white" socialism. I recall that in the 1990s the Soviet Union made a big push to get a hot water heater in every Soviet hospital. Of course, everyone wants everyone to have medical care. We just want the system to remain as private as possible. The American government cannot give us a Mayo Clinic or a Lilly Pharmaceutical to manufacture insulin cheaply--those are functions of free enterprise.

 

I'm sorry you see me that way. I'm a Canadian living in Australia and am proud of the heritage of Tommy Douglas who was a socialist, baptist minister who is widely viewed as the founder of the Canadian health care system. Like all health care systems, there are pros and cons. The systems in Canada, US, UK and Australia all have aspects that work really well and other aspects that don't work so well. There is no perfect way to run health care. But when I look at these 4 countries whose health care systems I am most familiar with, it is very difficult to find any metric where the US system as a whole actually outperforms the other ones.

 

He's right. Socialism and socialists are evil. Look at our VA system or the British system. Its a nightmare.

The socialist dirtbags in our country now brag about how everbody has access to healthcare thanks to Big Brother, but they always leave out the teeny tiny little detail that many of these people who now have access to healthcare can no longer afford the deductible.

Free markets are Biblical and provide the best service at the lowest cost. If you care about the poor, then get the government out of healthcare and get back to allowing men to be free.

 

Recently saw a TV show about Dostoevsky, who as a Christian predicted the bloodbath of the 20th century because of socialism and who denounced socialism as evil and socialists as evil. I am not against medical welfare but I am against putting politicians of any stripe in charge of healthcare. I saw a Fox commentator yesterday actually say that Cuba has a good healthcare system under the communist repression of the Castro brothers--such talk is not based upon any reality in Cuba where once of the basic health problems has to be a near starvation diet. The wife of Leopoldo Lopez told President Trump in February that Venezuela was short not only of food but also short of medicine.

As for the notion that the American healthcare system is in any manner inferior to Canada, UK and Australia, Canadians regularly come to the US to get treatment because rationed healthcare does not allow immediate care in Canada. And I doubt if anyone in the UK would claim that their healthcare is superior to American healthcare because of the UK's lack of funds. Eventually, Australia will learn that socialism means government deciding healthcare on the basis of politics and not on the basis of medical practice. The bad parts of the American healthcare such as the Veterans Administration have shown clearly that politics determines treatment in the VA and American Veterans should be given freedom of choice to obtain their healthcare in the private sector instead of being forced into the substandard government care.

 

I am pro free markets in general but I would never say this. Anyone who says something like this is reading their own preconceived view into the text.

The closest you can find about economic policy in the bible is the OT laws. The requirement of leaving grain unpicked for the poor and the concepts of Jubilee do not sound at all like free market economics to me.

 

Maybe you should actually ask Canadians and Brits as a whole, and not just the ones who have a beef with the system for one reason or another. In every system there are winners and losers. The measurement of a system is not the absence of losers. For every person who complains about the Canadian or UK system, how many do you think I can find that complains about the US system? The way to measure a health care system is to look at the system as a whole in terms of cost and health outcomes. By almost every metric out there, the US system is vastly inferior unfortunately. I wish it were not so as I have many friends and family in the US. Fortunately most of them are wealthy and can afford reasonable health care.

 

Except you have Canadians going to the US and other places to get healthcare.

Government run healthcare means giving up freedom and taking on heavy taxes.

In the US there are more considerations in how healthcare will be paid for and provided than just healthcare. We consider loss of freedom, large government bureaucracy, being able to determine the best plan of action between us and our doctor with no interference from the government.

 

Like I said, there are always some who win and others who lose in every health care system. Those Canadians going to the US are those who are wanting to jump the queue in non-urgent surgery/specialists or seeking treatment that has not been approved yet in Canada because of either cost or lack of proven efficacy. Those are the few who lose out in Canada but the Canadian system does help pay for some treatments that are available in the US but not in Canada for certain conditions. In Australia the non-urgent surgery/specialist issue is mitigated by a parallel private system to some extent.

Some will always lose out. In Canada it is those few with rare conditions or are too impatient or entitled to wait. In the US it is the many poor and elderly because of their multiple morbidities. Unfortunately they are the ones in most need of health care services.

 

You don't know what you are talking about.

 

North Americans and Medical Tourism: High Health Costs Driving Consumer Interest in Travelling for Treatment

 

Of course I don't. I should just believe whatever you tell me, right?

 

Your ignorance of scripture is duly noted.

There's nothing anti-free market about charity.