Is free healthcare a human right?

[dveb8886]

Hello everybody, I've been seeing lots of comments (not on this forum, but all over the internet in general), where people are claiming that free healthcare is a human right. 

My thoughts on this is that free healthcare is not a human right because it doesn't match the same criteria that other generally agreed-on human rights have.

Rights such as freedom of speech, protections against search and seizures, or cruel and unusual punishment all have one thing in common: There is no effort required on the part of society to observe these rights. People don't need to pay taxes in order for other people to have the physical ability to express their opinions. In fact, the censorship efforts against freedom of speech to violate the right DO require that effort. The manpower to arrest those who speak out against the government for instance. The mainpower needed to break into someone's home, or to torture someone are also examples where the violation of the right requires more energy than observing the right.

This rule for healthcare is the other way around. In order to provide free healthcare, society needs to find a way to compensate the doctors, and the producers of the tools that doctors use, while not providing free healthcare requires no direct effort on the part of society,

So knowing this, I say that free healthcare is not a right. For those of you who are in favor of free healthcare as a human right, how do you take this rule of cost (for lack of a better term) into account? how do you solve the issue of society having a shortage of resources to meet the demands for healthcare?

[Pepin]

You're not likely to find anybody on here that is likely that is able to say that health care is a right, but I can attempt a devil's advocate position, which honestly might be more productive.

I used to do these types of arguments on the forums, and I started to get to the point where I was improving and making their attempt at arguments coherant so I'd be able to make a response. The insults weren't even good, so I had to start coming up with better ones, like "why don't you go to Somalia, convinced a bunch of people that your philosophy is the way, and then you could walk down the beach hand in hand with the invisible hand".

[Drymarchon]

Healthcare of any kind or form is essentially a service... To consider any kind or form of service a "Human Right," would be absurd, since any Right inherent to Human Beings must naturally be observed for all Human Beings equally... Okay I agree, Devil's Advocate would be far more interesting, and a lot more fun!

[Rob_Ilir]

It should be a right for anybody to set up free health care for others if they want. But you cant group mightily up and demand free stuff from anybody.

[PatrickC]

The trouble with saying healthcare is a human right, is that it attempts to trump the natural rights of those that have to pay for it, more notably, the taxpayer of course. If the only way we get to save a persons life is by threatening and/or carrying out those threats on another, then the contradiction is fairly clear that free healthcare is not a right.

[Marcus Clarke]

I think that you need to be careful about arguing from within the framework of Statism.  "Rights" do not exist.  They are created by humans for one reason or another.  They are not scientifically tested (by the general population).  Morality is not an action that "does not require energy".  If I let my children starve, even though it took no energy on my part, that does not make that action moral. What we need to do is expose the violence of Statism to people.  Once they agree that violence is immoral and that Statism is human organized violence, then they will necessarily understand that "free healthcare" is not a valid argument.Remember that when you bring up the thoughts of "cost" and "shortage of resources", then you are skipping ahead in the development of the argument.  Once you bring up the disagreement that healthcare should not require violence to obtain, then you must argue on that point until it is solved (by the way - if you do solve it by agreeing that healthcare should be solved by violence, then you should make a post about that one!). When you talk to others, I think that you should assume that they assume that the government can actually achieve the goals that it sets out to do.  So, let's pretend that the government can provide awesome healthcare to every single person.  Let's also pretend that they can make everyone feel happy with their life, and when they need more money, they get it.  Let's pretend that government makes certain that no citizens (non-goverment persons) steal or kill.  Do those ends justify the means of the government?  This is the "Brave New World" scenario.  Another way to phrase it might be, "How much murder, assault, and theft should humans do to solve all of the problems in the world?"  The moral answer is "None.".  This is also why parenting is such an important part of nonviolence.  Parents terrorize children because the "ends justify the means".  "My child will be a better person if I just hurt her a little right now.  She will thank me for it later."  The child grow up, understanding this logic through the observation of their senses, and prescribe it to their fellow humans.  In a sense, when you try to fight this antilogic in other people, then what you are doing is you are activating someone else's defense mechanism against the moral crimes that have been commited against them in their life, which they have masked by illusion that the "ends" (who they are now) justified the means (the violence they received).

[Wesley]

I am glad someone brought up that rights do not exist.

 

The right to free speech only exists because of the idea of "public property" which is a false and wrong idea. On my private property, iff you say things that offend me, I am allowed to kick you off of my property justly. There is no free speech, only non-agression and private property.

 

Cruel and unusual punishment exists as a "protection" against the government monopoly provision of justice services. Same thing with search and seizure protections. These are bull and do not exist.

 

All of these rights are broken daily and irrelevant. They do not exist. They are words on paper to make you feel safe and to distract you from true morality.

 

When you concede that there are arbitrary rights based on things like government violence, public property, and other abhorations then that is when you run into the problem. It is inevitable in the paradigm that individuals make up whatever rights they want to when these rights are made up to begin with.

[nathanm]

If the person claiming such utter BS is not themselves providing a good or service without accepting any payment for it they are not worth your time.  Demanding free stuff from other people without being willing to do the same yourself?  GTFO  If free healthcare is a right(or 'is mandatory' if you prefer)  then everything is and now you've got an economic system with no means of exchange.

[LovePrevails]

free healthcare really means forcing people to do things because they got a qualification

 

if someone says free health care is a right point out you can't give people rights to things without taking them off someone else, and do they think it's moral to force doctors to treat people

 

then say would you rather everyone had free health care, even if it was poor,

or would you rather that everyone could have access to healthcare they could afford, and the standard was much higher?

 

then explain a few things

1) Doctors need at least 7 years of study to be allowed to treat people, most of the things doctors do do not require 7 years of study

therefor you could dramatically reduce healthcare costs by giving those tasks to people who had studied 1,2,3,4,5,6 years and leave the

expert tasks to 7-years-of-study experts

2) prevention is better than cure and most health issues are caused by unhealthy lifestyles

if they would support a policy like taxing cigarettes and alcohol to pay for treatment of people with related illnesses

a better way would to be have an insurance model where they get details when you get a drink or a pack of cigarettes

and either charge you a few cents surcharge to pay for future treatment (which they can invest, etc.) or they increase your premiums

this would be voluntary - if you didn't take the offer of paying ahead of time or were fraudulent then they wouldn't cover you for these illnesses or would only cover you aprt way

this would all encourage people to make healthier decisions rather than wait until crises occur

3) some people think that private healthcare is not egalitarian, but their are benefits to say, letting rich people pay their way to the front of the queue, for example, if kidneys are rare and some rich guy pays a hospital $250,000 for a kidney, that is $250,000 the hospital has to treat poorer patients, research ways of cloning kidneys, improve and cheapen the processes of removing kidneys and make it more efficient, etc. it seems unfair in the short term but in the long term it benefits all the people who want kidneys and can't afford it in the future. Once upon a time someone had to pay $250,000 for a computer so that we can get a laptop for a few hundred bucks now , that's the way it works at the beginning.

 

hope this is helpful, please let me know

[RestoringGuy]

I believe this notion "rights do not exist" is completely bogus.  If it's true that all rights originate with human thought and social convention, then rights are subject to chicken-and-egg analysis.

 

"Rights do not exist".  Therefore you have no right to say that.

 

I have not given you that right.  As a thinker and grantor of what constitutes rights, I don't accept such things.  And if I did accept it, my right to do so is now suspect.  Since by this bogus idea, human acceptance is supposedly the only thing that makes rights manifestly present, there is no point of origin.  There is no way to say "rights do not exist" because saying so with validity requires rights to begin with.

 

For me, the only way out of the conflict is to say some rights exist without our personal consent or knowledge.  If you expect to convince others that rights do not exist, you are implicitly making use of rights that exist apparently without your knowledge.  If you believe rights do not exist and do NOT wish to convince others by logic (purposely keeping it a faith-based secret of some higher truth), then why not be quiet about it and conserve your energy.  The whole act is a performative contradiction.

 

[Wesley]

I do not need the right to free speech in order to say that. In fact, it is good that I do not as it does not exist. All I need are the rational rules that are provable of private property and the non-aggression principle. 

 

In fact, if I say things on your property, that is the only way that you get the ability to be a "grantor of rights" as for any reason you are allowed to kick others off of your private property. Even if nothing wrong was said but it was loud, or annoying, or I've already been over too long. 

 

On my own private property you have no right to control what I say as that would be a violation of the NAP and private property to aggress against me for what I say. 

 

These rules exist. Freedom of Speech exists in an anti-rational society that doesn't respect private property, doesn't believe in non-violent solutions to social problems, and has the ridiculous idea that a concept (the government) can own property. 

 

When you have this much irrationality, then you try to establish rules to live in an irrational environment like Freedom of Speech. Then they get broken, and new irrational rules are invented, and it all falls apart. 

 

The goal is to get rid of the rules that are not logically provable. If I am not allowed to remove you from my property for saying things that I do not like, then you can claim that Freedom of Speech supersedes these other logical ideas and we can discuss that. However, if you recognize that the NAP and private property are logical ideas that are all you need and allow the removal of someone from your property for saying something that is wrong, then you understand why it is an arbitrary rule that does not exist except for these irrational situations we live in now. 

[RestoringGuy]

The goal is to get rid of the rules that are not logically provable. If I am not allowed to remove you from my property for saying things that I do not like, then you can claim that Freedom of Speech supersedes these other logical ideas and we can discuss that. However, if you recognize that the NAP and private property are logical ideas that are all you need and allow the removal of someone from your property for saying something that is wrong, then you understand why it is an arbitrary rule that does not exist except for these irrational situations we live in now. 

 

Yes getting rid of rules that are not logically provable is a good concept.  What is identifiable as your property is maintained by verbalizations (written or otherwise) and are socailly conventional.  There's no way to prove by independent validation.  To remove me from your property, you must violate NAP.  Without your legitimacy of free speech (an my acceptance of your rights), I will call it my property and you are commiting theft.  This has been covered before.

 

I am glad you agree some rules exist.  Why property is said to be a proven rule I just can't grasp.