Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly • Hacker News Board

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#31

Post by winrid » Thu, May 25, 2023, 8:49 AM UTC

halfjoking wrote: post #29

winrid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just an issue with the J&J vaccine? Some of your points are perfectly valid but nobody is waging a war against the unvaccinated, other than bugging them to get vaccinated. Both me and a parent have blood clotting disorders (hers worse than mine fwiw) and the vaccine wasn't an issue (Moderna and pfizer). Was getting it a risk? Ya. But I saw enough people die from it and didn't want to spread the virus to ot…

I believe the vaccines killed a lot of people, not just J&J https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-devils-advocat... My link above was about #ECMOGATE. The claim is that doctors were literally killing the unvaccinated by giving them different treatment plans that lead to more death.

was it the treatment or the fact that they weren't vaccinated that led to the higher death rate?

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#32

Post by lapcat » Thu, May 25, 2023, 9:39 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #3

dfdg wrote: post #2

Encouraging generic drugs eases the problem a little bit. Right to health care should be in the constitution instead of right to own guns.

Health care requires other people’s labor though. If you make that a right you risk needing to implement some kind of forced labor system (sure it can be obfuscated as much as you like). Not taking guns doesn’t require anyone’s labor, so you don’t run into this hazard. I’m not particularly pro gun, I just don’t think positive rights are practical from a design perspective.

> Not taking guns doesn’t require anyone’s labor, so you don’t run into this hazard.

Of course it does. Labor is always required to protect your legal rights. Government, military, police, courts, those are all labor.

This labor is the difference between actually having enforceable legal rights and living in the Hobbesian state of nature, the war of all against all.

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#33

Post by derelicta » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:00 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #17

derelicta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly letting poor folks die is the most moral option. If positive rights make you so uncomfortable, I'll let you know they are very much widespread in today's constitutions. My canton's has many economic rights enumerated, including the right to a proper shelter. And I don't hold it for a nasty totalitarian dictatorship (yet?)

A government constitution should be designed to be robust. It should be assumed that no rights will be removed under any possible circumstances . The inclusion of positive rights simply reduces the space of possible circumstances the government can traverse without removing rights, and depending on what sort of positive right we are taking about it does so drastically. Giving the government the ability to remove righ…

"If the medical system is ever mismanaged to the point of insolvency, should the government have the ability to violate a constitutional right to get things back in order? If they are allowed to violate that right, presumably they are able to violate other “rights” in the same class depending on the circumstances as well."

Well yes?

Some rights may be absolute. Some others may be limited. Things are rarely absolute. Democracies are more than their respective constitution. They also rely on their political culture and how healthy it is. Even if your constitutional norms are supposedely "weak", does it matter in the end? It's not a bench of judges who are gonna protect your rights, but citizens as a whole.

That's why this whole argument that positive rights being displayed as "flaws" doesn't make much sense to me. And why guaranteeing access to proper healthcare sounds to me like a well balanced risk.

What is more likely? Than the State will turn you into a slave through this positive right to healthcare, or that you will end up dead by lack of said guaranteed access to healthcare ?

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#34

Post by Sakos » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:19 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #15

ok_dad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously don’t understand people whose ethics accept that some folks will just die because they don’t want to pay an extra few dollars in taxes. You grew up here, your success or failure depends on the health of our society in many ways, and our society is falling apart because opportunistic capitalists drain all of the productivity with very little gain for the average person since the 70s. I guess we can keep pl…

This is a great example of why discussing politics on the internet is annoying. People assume others’ positions and yell past each other. Not making healthcare a “right” does not preclude having a government run health care system. Why would it?

Because generally the argument of "it doesn't need to be a right" is coupled with arguing why universal healthcare is bad.

Your comment is a great example for how people try to muddy the waters and distract from the issues at stake.

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#35

Post by refurb » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:31 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #23

pfannkuchen wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health care requires other people’s labor though. If you make that a right you risk needing to implement some kind of forced labor system (sure it can be obfuscated as much as you like). Not taking guns doesn’t require anyone’s labor, so you don’t run into this hazard. I’m not particularly pro gun, I just don’t think positive rights are practical from a design perspective.

> Health care requires other people’s labor though. If you make that a right you risk needing to implement some kind of forced labor system Whether that's true or not depends on the exact parameters of the right, and, in any case, the US has compulsory civic labor notwithstanding the 13th Amendment (jury service actively, conscription historically). Jury service direct relates to a positive right. It also has positiv…

Voting is voluntary.

Jury duty places a large burden on many people. I served on a jury and there were people who missed out on work and made $20 per day.

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#36

Post by refurb » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:35 AM UTC

reaperman wrote: post #8

pfannkuchen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are hopefully aware of the difference between a right granted to all citizens and a project funded by the government?

I am. But you dont make sense. All Americans have a right to K-12 education, it's funded by the government. How is that different from all Americans having a right to healthcare, being funded by the government? If someone doesn't wanna be in healthcare anymore they can still switch to whatever they want to. They're not forced labor any more than teachers are. Perhaps you'd like to sign a petition to lower forced labo…

No, Americans don’t have a “right” to K-12 education unless you pervert the definition of “right”.

The government can easily change what public school is offered and the courts aren’t going to intervene and say “no, you have to provide K-12 education as guaranteed by the Constitution”.

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#37

Post by mcv » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:37 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #17

derelicta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly letting poor folks die is the most moral option. If positive rights make you so uncomfortable, I'll let you know they are very much widespread in today's constitutions. My canton's has many economic rights enumerated, including the right to a proper shelter. And I don't hold it for a nasty totalitarian dictatorship (yet?)

A government constitution should be designed to be robust. It should be assumed that no rights will be removed under any possible circumstances . The inclusion of positive rights simply reduces the space of possible circumstances the government can traverse without removing rights, and depending on what sort of positive right we are taking about it does so drastically. Giving the government the ability to remove righ…

> No one is saying constitutions with positive rights are totalitarian. I am just saying that they are fragile and should be avoided for that reason.

You may say that, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. If we look at how this works out in practice, are constitution with positive rights really more fragile? There's nothing fragile about Switzerland, for example; that's probably one of the most stable countries in the world. The US, on the other hand, seems to be constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and/or authoritarianism. Government institutions frequently seem to violate the law with impunity, and now Trump, a major presidential candidate, seems to want to get rid of the constitution.

Political culture is probably much more important than the distinction between positive and negative rights, and I don't think a culture of hurting people or letting people suffer, is good for any country.

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#38

Post by mcv » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:41 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #25

reaperman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet despite being at the state level, all americans do have a right to K-12. Is that also forced labor?

You don’t seem to understand what is meant by forced labor here. I am happy to explain it to you. A right is something that can never be legally violated by the government. It is possible for a health care system run by anyone to end up with a level of resources below what it would need to meet its commitments. If government runs health care and health care is a right, then the government is not legally allowed to fa…

This sort of theorising doesn't seem to be very relevant in practice, and I frankly only see this from Americans. Other countries seem to be doing much better without hammering on this needless distinction. They make their health systems work by making sure it's sufficiently funded and well-organised, and don't need to account for a major party simply wanting to destroy it just to hurt people (except possibly the UK soon).

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#39

Post by viraptor » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:46 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #27

dragonwriter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans do not have a “right” to education in the same way they have a “right” to e.g. free speech. OTOH, they do have a right to trial by jury, a right to counsel, and a right to vote in the sense that they have a right to free speech, and each of these rights require someone else’s labor.

Technically true, though not really a risk due to minuscule resources required to implement these. What percent of GDP do public defenders account for?

You pretty much started the thread talking about something technically true. If you're discussing rights that should be so universal they don't get changed in extreme situation like not being able to provide a service without forced labour, then why does the GDP matter? GDP doesn't exist in the constitution.

Re: Share of Americans skipping medical care due to money woes jumps significantly

#40

Post by mcv » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:49 AM UTC

reaperman wrote: post #8

pfannkuchen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are hopefully aware of the difference between a right granted to all citizens and a project funded by the government?

I am. But you dont make sense. All Americans have a right to K-12 education, it's funded by the government. How is that different from all Americans having a right to healthcare, being funded by the government? If someone doesn't wanna be in healthcare anymore they can still switch to whatever they want to. They're not forced labor any more than teachers are. Perhaps you'd like to sign a petition to lower forced labo…

I think the issue here is that most countries don't have to deal with a major political party trying to destroy their healthcare or education system, while the US does. Everybody may have a right to K-12 education, but what if states underpay teachers and make teachers criminally liable when parents get upset about their child getting taught from a normal school curriculum? I wish this was a ridiculous hypothetical, but it's basically what's going on right now.

A toxic political culture can lead a government to sabotage things it's legally required to provide. That said, that same toxic culture can also lead it to violate negative rights. The real problem isn't the distinction between different classes of rights, but the fact that one political party is eager to destroy or at least compromise those rights.