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Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

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Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#31

Post by codegeek »

codeddesign wrote: post #23
codegeek wrote: post #7

"People need a lot of things. You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”." "Why is health care Special" I tell you why healthcare is special. You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. I can buy ramen noodles and survive for cheap. Sure it is not the best but I won't frikin die. But If I get cancer and cannot afford…

Try to eat ramen noodles for the rest of your life and see how your health goes. Most health issues today are directly related to diet. However, processed food and snacks are much cheaper (ramen noodles) than healthy alternatives. McDonald's is a lot cheaper than going to the store and cooking a meal. So no, food is not cheaper when you try to compare it against healthcare.

I used ramen noodle as an example. There are plenty types of food that you can buy for cheap. Are you really telling me that for a family of 4, your grocery bill will be $1500/month ? That is the average cost that I was paying out of pocket for a good plan (with low deductibles etc). And yes, I have kids which makes it absolutely critical to have a really good plan.

My grocery bill for 4 of us goes about $500/month and that too when we are not really into coupons and stuff.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#32

Post by bryanlarsen »

That's not an either-or situation. Health care, food, clothing and shelter are rights and businesses.

The rights are positive rights, in other words they must be provided, and cost resources to provide. (In contrast to negative rights like freedom of expression, where it costs resources to take the right away from you)

As positive rights (aka obligations), they must be rationed. Welfare et al provides enough money to pay for basic food & shelter but not for caviar and mansions. The article is a very reasonable discussion of why it's harder to ration health care, but the conclusion (and title) doesn't necessarily follow.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#33

Post by deelowe »

jjfine wrote: post #13
gph wrote: post #3

The article does raise an interesting point in that most people don't necessarily see food as an inalienable right that people shouldn't need to pay for. But to counter that point our government has set up a system of farm subsidies and management to ensure affordable food is available to pretty much anyone... and even those who don't have the money get food stamps. Seems like the government tries to do the same thin…

I thought that was an interesting point as well. I'm having trouble coming up w/ full argument but one point is that there's huge differences btwn food and healthcare. When you only have $20 to spend on food for the week, you don't need to go to the government for help. You can cook and eat rice and beans all week. That's what I did in college. The difference w/ healthcare is there's no rice and beans of cancer treat…

It's pretty easy to institute the life changes needed for you to go from not having enough food to survive on a daily basis to having enough to survive.

You can't go from not having enough to treat cancer to having enough to treat cancer easily or ever in many cases. This is like saying FEMA should be a for profit institution. Getting cancer is no different than having a tornado level your home. No amount of picking yourself up by the bootstraps will get you back on track. This is why we have a social safety net. Healthcare is no different.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#34

Post by SilasX »

codegeek wrote: post #7

"People need a lot of things. You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”." "Why is health care Special" I tell you why healthcare is special. You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. I can buy ramen noodles and survive for cheap. Sure it is not the best but I won't frikin die. But If I get cancer and cannot afford…

That's not true -- for any given health situation, there is a range of options, with different resource costs and different health benefits and risks (some strictly worse in all respects). It's not like Moses comes from the mount with tablets that say "the only way to treat that condition is with this resource that happens to cost exactly $100k".

(Obvious caveat about what options you can consider in emergencies.)

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#35

Post by limeyx »

gph wrote: post #3

The article does raise an interesting point in that most people don't necessarily see food as an inalienable right that people shouldn't need to pay for. But to counter that point our government has set up a system of farm subsidies and management to ensure affordable food is available to pretty much anyone... and even those who don't have the money get food stamps. Seems like the government tries to do the same thin…

First of all some people do think food is a right ! Second generally speaking all but the poorest can at least find some kind of food to purchase or get donated even if it's not perfect

For healthcare it's totally different with treatments costing thousands of of dollars plus, doctor visits out of the question without insurance for many (and even with) and monopolies on drugs and treatments contributing to vastly higher prices in the US than many other countries.

We may not have "death panels" but we definitely have insurance "no-men" aplenty (and high deductibles) to effectively deny people (especially the poor) decent care

This article is pretty wrong IMO there is no example in the US of "free-market" care to compare anything to.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#36

Post by [deleted] »

SilasX wrote: post #27
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #5

The conclusion of the article is a bit ridiculous. tl;dr healthcare isn't a right because we can only spend a finite amount. Yeah, ok, but that dismisses priority entirely. Scarcity is still in play, so you treat the immediate needs first. I think we do have capacity in the healthcare system to do it that way. The author of the article basically bucketed a sprained ankle and a stroke in the same category, and conclud…

I agree the author makes the wrong inferences from the situation, but her points do often go overlooked in the debate: people make a big deal about "omg, someone died because they couldn't afford [more] health care", even though this will always be true, in every system, even the best ones -- you can't save everyone. (Similarly, the rhetoric around "death panels" was toxic made this insight harder to accept.)

[deleted]

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#37

Post by jedmeyers »

elviejo wrote: post #11

Human Rights Declaration: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." ...and Health Care is how one stays alive, therefore health care should be a right.

>...and Health Care is how one stays alive, therefore health care should be a right.

Non sequitur. 'Right to life' means that no one can interfere in a normal functioning of your body without your consent. It does not mean that someone has to interfere in order for you to stay alive.

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#38

Post by SmellTheGlove »

SilasX wrote: post #27
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #5

The conclusion of the article is a bit ridiculous. tl;dr healthcare isn't a right because we can only spend a finite amount. Yeah, ok, but that dismisses priority entirely. Scarcity is still in play, so you treat the immediate needs first. I think we do have capacity in the healthcare system to do it that way. The author of the article basically bucketed a sprained ankle and a stroke in the same category, and conclud…

I agree the author makes the wrong inferences from the situation, but her points do often go overlooked in the debate: people make a big deal about "omg, someone died because they couldn't afford [more] health care", even though this will always be true, in every system, even the best ones -- you can't save everyone. (Similarly, the rhetoric around "death panels" was toxic made this insight harder to accept.)

Medicine is but one of many areas where you can do everything right, make all of the right decisions, and still end up with the bad outcome. I've never accepted it as a good reason to not try to achieve a goal that I otherwise think to be a good one.

The other obvious example is law. Everything can be done correctly and you may be right, but nobody commands the jury. Yet there it is, the 6th Amendment (if you're in the US, that is), with that right to a lawyer in instances where you may be deprived of life or liberty!

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#39

Post by limeyx »

atom-morgan wrote: post #16
codegeek wrote: post #7

"People need a lot of things. You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”." "Why is health care Special" I tell you why healthcare is special. You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. I can buy ramen noodles and survive for cheap. Sure it is not the best but I won't frikin die. But If I get cancer and cannot afford…

> You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. The two industries aren't even remotely close to be able to make a comparison like that. Why not let healthcare operate as a free(er) market?

Because then you get to spend $300 on an Epi-Pen compared to (an already outrageous) $80 or so in the UK due to "patents"

you may say that patents are crimping the "free" market but who is really going to vote to delete those from health care ?

And even if they were removed, there are many other ways the big companies will stifle competition to keep profits high.

Sometimes something bigger than a corporation needs to step in and this IMO is one of those times/places

Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right

#40

Post by clavalle »

'Right' is probably too strong a word.

Does a person have the 'Right' to be rescued from a car accident that would surely kill them without help when it is in other people's power to do so?

No. BUT at some point I think it is fair to expect certain behavior from others living in civilized society.

A Right? Probably not. But Reasonable Expectation doesn't have the same punch as a slogan.

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