Does everyone or anyone have a right to have medical or health care, and if not why?

I don’t pay for it and I don’t think anybody should have to. Medication, possibly.

Yes.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Yes.

@ragingloli

Unfortunately, I live in the US, which also disregards the following:

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

No one should die for want of proper medical care in any civilized country. Why are our doctors going to 3rd world countries to donate medical care to their people, when we have millions of people right here that can’t afford basic medical or dental care.

If what you want requires action by somebody else against their will, then what you are talking about is not a right, it is political perk provided in exchange for loyalty and/or a vote.

A right requires nothing more than your prerogative to act, and the lack of interference by others.
Thus, anyone has a right to seek medical treatment. They do not have a right to demand or expect somebody else to pay for it.

Oh, Americans.

I think in this issue we are confusing basic rights with privileges.

@DWW25921 ~I forgot that human rights are privileges.

@jerv Are you of the impression that “free stuff” is a right?

@josie Doctors are just as entitled to fair compensation for their efforts as anyone else. As for making others pay, that’s part of what governments are for. Are you claiming that any government that does anything that requires revenue is inherently a human rights violation as well?

@DWW25921 Free luxuries are a privilege. To argue that the right to live is a privilege means that anyone can revoke anyone else’s privilege to live arbitrarily. Do you want others to be able to kill you with no repercussions whatsoever?

@DWW25921
i wonder how you would feel about that argument were you living in a country where you would have to pay protection money to mobsters to not have your legs broken or be killed.
you either pay to fund police to protect you from mobsters, or pay the mobsters.
not being killed by others is therefore a privilege, because it must be paid for.

@jerv I’ve used that same argument in a anti abortion stance so I think I’ll let this one fly. No I would not want to be killed with no repercussions to the aggressor.

@DWW25921 Whether a fetus is human (yet) or not is an argument that is still debated (and I have no wish to debate that here), but there is no question that the already-born are human.

We’re born into this world with our civilisation and technology built on the labour of previous generations. In this way, we all (should) inherit the infrastructure and resources of our society, and should enjoy this inheritance as a common wealth for all. This includes healthcare. It is not something to be monopolised by the wealthy or by those who “can afford it”.

It seems to me that good healthcare is one of many prerequisites for positive liberty. We have the resources and technology to give everyone the opportunity for good healthcare, and it empowers all of us to develop and reach our potential when we can rely on a good system to provide for our healthcare needs.

And we also see the contemptible moral bankruptcy of @josie‘s and @DWW25921 so-called Libertarian™ dogma. Social-darwinism masquerading as “liberty”, with market forces being the arbiter of allocating our resources, monopolised by the rich and distributed by them on the basis of profitability. A nightmare that has only ever brought misery and poverty, juxtaposed with obscene and decadent wealth, whenever its ideas have been attempted.

The so-called Libertarians™ talk of will, but don’t question the subjection of will to the forces of private capital. They use the language of the oligarchs, bemoaning that “free stuff” is given out at the expense of others, blissfully ignorant of their own inherited privileges and how wealth is actually created. Here’s a clue: hospitals aren’t built from your tax dollars, they’re built from bricks and mortar and with human labour, but this economic fallacy of talking about money as a resource (even if at some level you know it isn’t) is just one of the litany of ignorant fallacies of your odious political and economic dogma.

Full medical coverage of all people helps encourage self-supporting, contributing workers/participants for the good of all. It also provides for our basic human compassion to help those who cannot help themselves.

This coverage should be paid for by all workers, just as an adequate education system is.

Health care for all citizens is right and proper. Losing all you own, including your house, business, etc., because you get sick is not right or proper.

Yes, as long as we have health care, everyone has a right to it.

No one sid the American Dream would be free. @DWW & @josie make good points. Idealism still costs money.

“If what you want requires action by somebody else against their will, then what you are talking about is not a right.”

This is patently false. Every right entails a duty on behalf of someone else, even if only the duty not to interfere. But not interfering is still an action, as omissions are a type of action. Furthermore, this duty holds regardless of whether it is in accord with anyone’s will. There is not one single political theorist who disagrees with this, not even the most ardent libertarian. Some don’t believe in rights at all, of course, but all understand that rights entail duties if they exist. It is a conceptual truth.

@Savoirefaire Our country is about opportunity not entitlement. Should we all get free homes, clothes & food too?

As with most issues, the disagreement is where you draw the line. We provide healthcare for everyone regardless of ability to pay at any hospital. It’s been that way for a long time and there has been little disagreement with it. But how much can you expect others to give you is a fairly subjective measure. If I need a kidney can I take one from you? Afterall, I need it and you have two. If I need blood to survive, can I take it from you by force if necessary? Most of us would say these things must be freely given, not all but most. So how much can we take from others. Money, property, organs, fluids, everything, or anything. Do you have a right to something you must take from someone else by force. I suppose it’s easier to answer if they’re taking the kidney from someone else.

@Jaxk That is why I support certain types of research. A little genetics, a little manufacturing, next thing you know, we can fire up a 3D printer to get a no-donor kidney. Of course, the research isn’t free, but I think it;s well worth taking a bit of money from people. Think of it as somewhere between insurance and an investment. I’d pay good money to not have a kidney taken!

Still, you are correct in that it really is all about where we draw the line.

@KNOWITALL It doesn’t matter that some things “cost money”. Money, or rather fiat currency, is not a finite resource. Money is used to allocate resources, but the money itself can (or could, in theory) be created at any time in any amounts. The question then is not whether something costs a particular amount, or whether there is enough money (conceptually absurd, since money is created from practically nothing) but whether there are enough resources and labour available to achieve a desired economic output.

As an aside. Americans waste 40% of all available food So, not only is there enough food to feed everyone easily, but that food itself is not being allocated rationally, since many people in the US do suffer from malnutrition (that includes obesity, folks) and millions go hungry.

Oh, and “entitlement” has to be one of the most obnoxious and pernicious words ever devised. Its usage and propagation is pure propaganda. It serves only to obfuscate and is utterly divisive in its intent. Another example of the language of the oligarchs and plutocrats that common people use unwittingly.

Don’t you see that what you call opportunity has prerequisites, and those prerequisites are things like healthcare, and clothing and food?

So, poor people should get off their asses and work for their food, shelter, and clothing, and if they don’t they’re worthless and deserve their lot. Except that some people can’t work without certain medications. Those people, well, God apparently didn’t want them to survive, so sucks to be them! The Holy Free Market gets to determine how much it costs to be healthy, and if you can’t pay, you can’t play!

@Kropotkin If everyone who felt like you made a fund for those without healthcare we’d have no issue.

I sometimes wonder if I’m writing in a different language.

it is like talking to a wall

We have the rights as a democratic nation to decide what we wish to do collectively, and what’s best left to private enterprise of to each person individually. Libertarians are often those who have their needs met and don’t want to pay a cent toward meeting anyone elses. However, they feel perfectly OK about driving on roads built by taxpayers, and shopping in markets filled with food that came over those roads to get to them and is generally safe to eat because we collectively pay to ensure it is. What sort of country would we have if the only way to enjoy a road was to build it yourself, and only you could drive on it? Decent health and dental care are things we would be better of individually and collectively to provide to all our citizens.

@ETpro They want to privatise all roads. Road building would be financed privately, and run on a for profit basis.

@KNOWITALL My post has nothing to do with that question. I am making a point about the concept of a right and a necessary truth that follows from it. No specific policy follows from what I have said.

In any case, the US Constitution is explicitly about both opportunity and entitlement. The Founders understood rights as something to which every human being is entitled. Furthermore, promoting the general welfare is mentioned in the very first sentence of the document. This idea some people have that opportunity and entitlement are somehow in opposition would have been utterly bizarre to the people who designed our system of government.

But to answer your question, I support a strong safety net that ensures nobody ever goes without the basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing. No one deserves to live in poverty, and the whole point of the social contract—that being the idea on which the Founders based our society—is to make sure everyone’s basic needs are met. There are various ways of achieving this goal, and which is best is subject to legitimate debate. But I find myself unable to value green pieces of paper more than the lives of my fellow human beings.

@KNOWITALL We try, but our money winds up funding wars and subsidizing multinational corporations that shift their tax burden onto small businesses instead.

@Seek I was a very poor kid, I get it that’s why I help others so much myself. I worked since age 12 to get out.

Imagine trying to work if you can’t breathe, or walk through the pain, or keep having seizures, or can’t be arsed to fight through your depression or agorophobia.

Do you sponsor an asthmatic $500 per month for their maintenance steroids and rescue inhalers?

Such arrogance…

‘Oh yeah… Of course I want to help… I actually give… I’m a great person… However I am the one that will decide on who I help and in what way…’

If life isn’t smiling at you, that is bad enough in and by itself. To have to go beg with a bunch of right wing smug assh@les is just adding insult to injury. Participating in a society means we share and rely on each others contribution. Without an arbiter, sub-optimization will allways take place (game theory).

We have a government to ensure we all contribute to each other’s wellfare in an optimal way so we all get to benefit. And so we don’t have to beg. I am actually disgusted by some of the remarks above. Yeagh…

if charity worked, we would not have had to replace it by social safety programmes.

If charity worked, it would work even though there are currently social programs.

Do you still have poor people? Charity is not working, and never has.

@Whitenoise All Dems are giving away all their money? What bs. Empty your accounts then cast your stones.

@KNOWITALL
That doesn’t even make sense. Why would you give away all your money? Especially the rich don’t need to give away all. Just a fraction of their wealth would do.

I am not against charity by the way, but to use that as an excuse of not having to have decent social care systems, health systems and developmental aid programs… Yeagh… Charity is so often not truly about caring for others, but rather too often about the one that does the charity. On top, as stated above, it doesn’t really help.

I am from a country where I paid over 50% of my income in taxes (marginal tax rate) and I have always been happily paying it. I have worried where my government spent the money on, rahther than not having been willing to pay…

Currently, I don’t pay taxes at all… I do my own little things here… Micro finance etc… I would, however, prefer to pay taxes to a decent government over what they do here.

@whitenoise In the US, many consider taxation about as morally acceptable as pedophilia.

@KNOWITALL You obviously don’t understand the role of government. I think you should start by reading the UDHR. Since you probably won’t look it up on your own:

Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

And notice Article 23, Section 3? That is where government comes in.

The fact that so many oppose that is proof that the US deserves it’s less-than-stellar reputation on human rights. And it’s all because of those that think that it’s not the role of government to do what every other civilized nation thinks it’s government’s responsibility to do.

So, where do you stand? Are you in the “grit your teeth and bear it as a necessary evil” type like most of us non-Conservatives? I don’t like paying taxes either, but I accept why I do. Well, in theory. When my money stops going for being that “other means of protection” and starts going for keeping GE tax-free and fighting costly, pointless wars, I get a little irate… but too many people feel that the latter is what government is supposed to do and berate anybody who has an opinion more inline with what the rest of the world thinks.

^ Applauds

@Jerv Bad life choices vs poor health & old age are very different. I don’t want to rely on govt to take care of me.

@KNOWITALL Then never get laid off, never get sick/injured, and save at least half of your gross earnings.

Are you saying I planned my last plant shutdown? That I scheduled having that SUV go sideways in front of me on the interstate? Yes. Maybe not intentionally, but that’s exactly what you’re saying.

@glacial Charity works for an endless number of people, but the problem is there is always someone new to take their place.

@YARNLADY They had charity in Dickensian England. They had charity in the age of Feudalism. They have it now in Sub-Saharan Africa as millions starve, die for lack of clean drinking water, and succumb to very preventable illness because nobody gives a shit. I’m not against private charity. I applaud it. But charity actually works for a small number of people. Many who claim that charity is all we should rely on do so because they’ve got theirs, and their attitude is screw the rest. If they starve or die of curable disease, that’s what they get for playing dumb.

I strongly disagree.

@ETpro If I understand you correctly, you are saying that in place of charity, we need a complete reformation of our attitude toward how to help people become contibuting members of the human race. I support that concept.

@YARNLADY Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying. And I agree with conservatives who warn that just giving people money to do nothing runs a substantial risk of failing in that effort.

@jerv No, but you can do your best to protect yourself.

I plan in advance to protect myself ie I buy additional life insurance, short and long term disability, in other words I hedge my bets to protect myself and my property as much as possible.

What a lot of people deny is that we are all taking care of others who have made poor choices like quitting school early, like marrying a treasure diver, like doing so much drugs and alcohol they’re brains get fried, etc… and while I feel bad for them, they have to live with the repercussions of their actions. If you don’t maintain your vehicle and it breaks down, who’s fault is that? There are many services and agencies to help the less fortunate, but when you have millions of people all needing help, you can’t deny that the system is overburdened.

To help, I do donate to local causes and people that I KNOW need help and have tried their best to make good decisions, like a friend who is waiting on disability to come through but working in the meantime, and her vehicle wouldn’t start. I don’t feel bad in the least because I do my part, but I’m skeptical that everyone else does their best to help others.

@Hypocrisy_Central Does everyone or anyone have a right to have medical or health care, and if not why?

No, because it would require violating other rights to have this right. For example, a doctor has a right to not service your needs. If you were to have a right to health care, the doctor would lose his property rights, his right to choose, and would be forced to service you.

Someone with money has a right to choose to not pay a poor person’s medical bills. If the poor person has a right to health care, someone with money loses his right to choose and is forced to pay the poor person’s medical bills.

The way I see it, anything that hampers someone’s personal development should be frowned upon.

The sick are inferior to those that are healthy.
The poor are inferior to those that with money.
The dumb are inferior to those that are intelligent.
The ugly are inferior to those that are beautiful.
The weak are inferior to those that are strong.

As an analogy, it is better to have 1,000 highly skilled soldiers than to have 10,000 inferior.

@tomathon
and blacks are inferior to whites ~

That depends entirely on the category. For example, which race, aside for a few exceptions, consistently wins the olympic medals for running? Blacks. In this category, whites would be inferior to blacks.

if you switch to a different category, lets say, Nobel Laureates, it would be mostly whites and Jews. Blacks would be inferior to whites in this category.

When it comes to moral attitudes, tomathons seem inferior to pretty most anyone I know.

and I know a lot of shitty people.

@KNOWITALL Are you offering to pay for my timing belt replacement then? After rent and utilities, I’m a little short, so that’s one maintenance item that’s been ignored even though it can take my car out. I lost 2 Hondas that way. But paying my bills is a poor life decision…..

I understand what you’re trying to say, but the reality is that most poor people are not the stupid, lazy drug addicts that many people think they are. Remember when Florida tried cutting welfare costs by drug testing because they thought at least half of the recipients were high?

And lets not get into why the system is overburdened. Suffice it to say, the Pope recently got blasted by the Far Right for giving the reason it’s that way ;)

@KNOWITALL BTW, Kudos for at least doing something to help the less fortunate. In an ideal world, there would be enough people both able and willing to help that we wouldn’t need so much government assistance.

These debates always segue off into the direction of sheer fucktardation. Having universal healthcare actually makes things cheaper for the people who don’t make bad choices too. On the aggregate, virtually everyone wins. Yes, people who make bad choices might benefit too, but resisting universal care (even the purely private, capitalistic variety of Black Bush) is just cutting off your nose to spite your own face.

@bolwerk Don’t muddy the waters by bringing facts or logic into it!

Seriously, though those that oppose universal healthcare have many other ideas that go against their own self-interest. Their ideology blinds them to things like history or math. And they are spiteful too. In the aforementioned Florida case, how much taxpayer money was wasted trying to punish druggies under the false guise of cost-savings?

But you’re right. Better to drive up costs for us all than risk doing something that might increase taxes or make us pay for people other than ourselves.

@bolwerk I KNOW it would make thing’s cheaper for me, trust me, I know that better than most and have spent thousands over the last six years on astronomical costs of my husband’s health issues.

What you’re not getting is that people who follow the rules and do the right things are still getting screwed via high costs and taxes both, while making too much to receive any help themselves if needed.

@KNOWITALL…like most of us middle-class folk and the working poor.

But it’s not because all the poor people are gaming the system. Yeah, there’s a bit of that, but most of the system-gaming happens in the billing departments, insurance offices, and Congress.

@jerv I’m just not convinced of that, in the majority of the cases. Too many people are unconcerned with paying their medical bills, I hear it all the time. A loan officer even told me once that most lenders don’t even look at med bills because everyone has them.

Yes, like the middle class and working poor, that’s me. I remember posting one Q about ‘how much is too much’ before people gave back to others, and the answers here blew my mind, I got reemed for not taking care of myself first (which I do but apparently not as much as other jellies.)

This is an issue that really bothers me, I love so many poor people and homeless people, but I also see so much fraud and lies and workarounds. “Let’s not get married so we both get our full checks” “Let’s have another kid, that’s another grand at least” It’s just an endless circle.

@KNOWITALL: I somehow suspect, as usual, I’m “getting” this stuff better than you. Failure to adequately address costs is a problem that might be a weakness in Blackbushcare, but it’s not a problem created by it. You might say it’s a preexisting condition of Amerikan healthcare. If you want to fix it, you need a more expansive healthcare system, not a weaker one.

Also, this stuff about poor people cheating more is another steaming crock of shit not backed up by empirical research. Wealthier people cheat more, and that’s considering they can already buy changes to the rules that favor them.

@tomathon No, because it would require violating other rights to have this right. For example, a doctor has a right to not service your needs. If you were to have a right to health care, the doctor would lose his property rights, his right to choose, and would be forced to service you.
Wouldn’t that be like saying I am being played because my money went to pay for a war I didn’t fill this nation needed to fight? Or having my money go to some pork barrel initiative because some elected official wanted to garner favor from some interest at election time?
If the government or some other doctor pays, how is the doctor who feels doing a procedure for free is robbing him, feel he is losing?

All If health coverage should be only for those who could pay, would we as a nation be happy with that with education; if you can pay you get educated, if you are poor you stay dumb and ignorant?

@bolwerk “Having universal healthcare actually makes things cheaper for the people who don’t make bad choices too.”

That would have been true if our government had chosen a Single Payer system, like any other first world democracy serious about providing workable healthcare to their citizens in return for a portion of their taxes. Collective bargaining is a great and beautiful thing when you are 318 million people strong. But they didn’t do this and what they did decide upon, I’m afraid, will be so unnecessarily inefficient, complicated, expensive, even punitive, and therefore doomed to fail, that after this is over Americans will never ask for healthcare again—- which leads me to believe that this may have been the plan in the first place.

@tomathon I’m so glad you have revealed yourself for what you are so early in your tenure here. You leave absolutely no doubt. I thank you for that.

True that, @Espiritus_Corvus.

@tomathon has stamped himself with a simple “Do not engage – not worth it”.

I expected some half-arsed attempt to deflect the implied accusation of racism. to his credit, he doubled down on it. a man, despicable he may be, who stands by his position.

@Espiritus_Corvus So… Vermont is a first-world democracy totally unlike the US?

@jerv I don’t understand the question.

^ Vermont has single-payer healthcare. Because they are not barbarians.

@Seek_Kolinahr Got it. Good to know. Well, I hope the single payer system in Vermont works for the people of Vermont as well as the single payer system in Sweden did for me. The models are out there and they work.

@Espiritus_Corvus: What I said is true, point blank. The ACA still widens coverage by leaps and bounds while providing a mechanism for financing needed care that didn’t exist before. It’s far from a perfect system, but it’s a vast improvement over nothing.

There is nothing magical about single-payer care either. It is a good idea, but it can be badly implemented. The point of any universal care system is that it ultimately cuts costs by spreading risk out. Considering only your discrete risk is much more dangerous than considering your average risk in a massive population. I tend to think single-payer works better, but the differences between a well-run single payer system and a well-run public-private partnership (like Germany or France, in different ways) are not exactly chasmic.

The biggest issue, in my opinion, is reducing the astronomical prices set by pharmaceutical companies and medical suppliers.

I mean, Advair – the medication my husband is supposed to take every day for his asthma – is $350 a month. To breathe.

in 2009, it was $150 a month. In 2007, it was $97 a month.

Why the fuck are they allowed to raise the price 250% in six years?

Oh, and his rescue inhalers? Went from $12 a piece to $50 a piece in the same time frame.

How much do hospitals have to pay for sterile gauze? or new scalpels? or any of the five billion different things they have to use once then throw away?

With a single-payer system, the “free market” doesn’t get to decide the price. The payer gets a chance to negotiate. “We are absolutely not paying $350 per month for this medication. You can have $75. If you don’t like that, then we buy none of them, and buy from your competitor instead.”

^ Or, like South Africa in the case of retroviral drugs for HIV victims, the government simply told the Pharmaceuticals (who wanted an average of $250,000 per year per patient during a full-blown epidemic) to go fuck themselves and began manufacturing the drugs themselves.

I mean, really, who did they think they were dealing with, the United States?

To play Devil’s Advocate here for a moment, without profits, pharmaceutical companies won’t have incentive to research new drugs. After all, they don’t exist for the betterment of mankind; their sole purpose is to enhance shareholder value. After all, the richer the shareholders are, the more money they have to create jobs.

Good thing this is the internet; I couldn’t say that with a straight face!

Well, since there is only one market that even allows price-gouging, guess who gets the shit end of the stick? The highest costs in the world by a wide margin, for patient outcomes worse than some Third World nations :/

@bolwerk Yes, it will make health insurance available to more people. Nowhere in my statement above did I say it wouldn’t.

You say you tend to think single payer works better. I don’t equivocate, I know it’s better and there is no reason why our government can’t administer a single payer system just as effectively as the democracies of western Europe do. I also know that what we are getting is vastly inferior to single payer. True, it is better than nothing. Barely. You may be satisfied with crumbs from the table for your money, but not I. This is an insult from an arrogant, sold-out government to its lowly serfs.

Take it down a notch, chico. We’re on the same side.

@Espiritus_Corvus I can think of a reason we can’t; a major political party with the support of a large percentage of the population who would rather watch the world burn than ever let a national single payer system happen.

@Espiritus_Corvus: what you said was, “That would have been true if our government had chosen a Single Payer system.” It’s true either way, single payer or not. Single-payer is an administrative mechanism and has nothing to do with how risk is controlled. And your doctrinaire support for single-payer is a bit silly. The best system in the world is widely regarded to be Sweden, and they’re not strictly single-payer either. Neither are Germany, France, or Switzerland (though I guess each Swiss canton technically could be).

@bolwerk France has the number one system based on healthare outcomes. All the countries you mention offer single-payer coverage to all their citizens. Those with enough money can opt to purchase additional benefits over and above that. Hardly an argument to show they aren’t models of single-payer success. They top the industrial world in outcomes. We’re at the very bottom. They do this at roughly half the cost per capita we incur for leaving 1 out of 7 of our citizens completely uninsured.

@ETpro…proving that objections to single payer are based on ideology rather than a desire to be fiscally responsible.

Either that, or they’re bad at math.

Or both; the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

There is nothing magical about single-payer care either. It is a good idea, but it can be badly implemented.
If it is not rocket science then how come many of the nations who don’t own rockets can outdo the nation who owns rockets in the arena of health care?

@ETpro: The key point is offering universal coverage. Single-payer just centralizes collection, which is fine but nothing to be an ideological stickler for. I think it’s preferable because it is simple. The French and (especially) German systems are a more complicated than just single-payer care.

@Hypocrisy_Central: the U.S. has a pretty good single-payer system if you happen to be over 65.

@bolwerk Being about to opt out of a single payer system if you are wealthy and want even better than it provides does not negate having a single-payer system in place.

^ Many wealthy Europeans have private supplementary health insurance policies. They all have that option. I never carried one because I never felt the need to have my breasts enlarged or have my nose modified.

@ETpro: I’m not talking about opting out. I think you’re confusing single-payer and public administration. In any case, Sweden* and France do require the individual to buy some of his/her own care/coverage, though not most of it, on top of the “single payer” component. Germany has a system where the state pays some, the individual pays some, and the individual’s employer pays some – basically a more effective version of Obamacare.

Also, really, I would define single-payer as paying one agency for the care, and having that agency manage the care. Sweden doesn’t really do this. I think local political subdivisions manage collection. Regardless, a single payer system is a common solution, but not the rule and probably not even the solution in a majority of countries. Central Europe in general seems to prefer the insurance mandate approach.

* I overestimated this for Sweden before. I thought it was more extensive, but apparently it’s mainly about adult dental care.

Single payer:
That kinda implies to me that the patient has to pay something. What if there is no way they can pay anything workable, do they not deserve health care because they have zero or near zero money to pay?

@Hypocrisy_Central: most countries with single-payer systems seem to collect healthcare administration costs as a normal part of their tax collections.

Countries with insurance mandates need to set up separate systems for those too poor to pay anything, as the U.S. does with Medicaid.

@Hypocrisy_Central The “single payer” in the single payer system is the government. We all pay indirectly through our taxes, but all medical bills go to the government. I’ve never seen a bill for medical services, even though I see my GP on a yearly basis, and have been to emergency a couple of times.

@bolwerk Your definition of single payer is your own then. Single payer as the rest of the world defines it is the norm in developed countries. France is single payer. Again, very rich people opting to buy coverage above what their government gives them does not render the system anything other than single payer.

Now in Central Europe, all bets are off. The US ranks below Costa Rica and just barely above Slovenia in healthcare outcomes. I have no idea what sort of system Slovenia enjoys. But with nearly the same benefits that the US gets, I bet they pay less than half as much.

@Hypocrisy_Central In a Single Payer environment the tax payers pay their taxes, a portion of which covers all their healthcare needs. The government, through their healthcare administration, compensates the provider with this tax money. So, the tax payer as one entity, as a Single Payer with the power of collective bargaining behind it, can get the best prices for meds, procedures and services. In the US, the collective bargaining would have 318 million consumers behind it. It’s a win-win situation for the providers are guaranteed a volume of business throughout the year and can therefore provide services at lower cost, and the consumer gets consistent, state-of-the-art healthcare in good times and bad from prenatal to grave.

The reason the US took Single Payer off the table from the start of formulation of the ACA, is that the Single Payer system creates a very competitive environment within the industry among providers that must negotiate with the government which wants the highest quality of goods and services for it’s population at the most reasonable price.

A lot of providers saw that they would probably not be able to meet the demands required to win these lucrative contracts and under ACA lose a lot of business. A lot of these same providers, under our unique type of democracy, legally support with campaign money and other forms of support, future sinecures, gifts, etc., the very same lawmakers that were involved in developing ACA—which makes the lawmaker’s dependent on these providers to maintain their careers and lifestyles.

Elements in the industry simply used their financial clout—in ways which now are legal, but have always been illegal until the campaign finance laws enacted in the 1970s— to influence our lawmakers to once again make decisions that are not in the interest of the people that vote them into office to represent those interests.

@ETpro: (1) Wikipedia is stupid. (2) Going even by its definition, France does require out of pocket expenses for certain kinds of care, which at least encourages private supplemental care. Either way, that makes it not single-payer. The wikipedos say that 77% is covered by the government. (3) Central Europe is something Wikipedia gets closer to right. None of the richer western countries have single-payer care, though some of the poorer ones do.

I think many of the poorer eastern Central European republics have adopted poorly managed insurance mandate systems. Poland has single-payer.

France could be described as a multi-tier care system with a heavy public financing component.

@bolwerk Single payer refers to who collects and distributes the money for primary healthcare insurance. It is as ridiculous to insist that if anyone in the system pays for something out of pocket it’s not single payer as it is to claim that if anyone in the US pays for a service out of pocket, then there is no such thing as private, for profit health insurance in the US.

@ETpro: 20%+ of the care is from sources other than the national healthcare service in France (going by your source). I have trouble dismissing that much private care as outlying noise. Either by accident or design, France is including private insurance in its system. It’s not as proliferated as Germany, but, if you want first world countries that almost categorically don’t do that, they’re more likely to be Anglo-Saxon.

The situation actually is analogous in the USA, where there are two (at least quasi-)single payer systems (Medicaid and Medicare) in an environment of insurance mandates. France leans single-payer, but is not exclusively single-payer.

(Watching dis intercourse go back and forth)
Who really cares if there is some or no private insurance to augment health care, is that a reason to keep everyone or anyone from having health care because private insurance is in the mix?

@Hypocrisy_Central: I don’t. For some reason @ETpro and @Espiritus_Corvus seem to.

@bolwerk I guess you can make up your own rules. But I have Medicare, yet I choose to purchase prescription drug coverage and other coverage. Does that mean I do not have Medicare even though I do?

@bolwerk Once again you’ve proven your poor reading comprehension and your inability to keep your preconceived ideas from blemishing what you read. Neither ETpro nor I have said that private supplementary healthcare policies are a reason to keep anyone from universal healthcare, nor have we said that it negates it in any way. As a matter of fact, we both have said the opposite. And, as for myself, I think it important to offer these options in a Single Payer environment, although I do not feel it is necessary—thus the designation, supplementary.

Other than gratuitous argument, willfully false statements such as contained in your last post, and interminable hairsplitting, what the fuck are you doing on this string—or on Fluther for that matter? You embarrass yourself here.

@Espiritus_Corvus: Remember, “That would have been true if our government had chosen a Single Payer system, like any other first world democracy serious about providing workable healthcare to their citizens in return for a portion of their taxes”?

Here is a non-exhaustive list of countries you preclude from being first world democracies: France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Israel, South Korea, Luxembourg. Arguably Sweden.

And I didn’t say either of you were against private supplementary policies. I said you “seem to” have a problem with systems that necessarily include a non-single-payer system as part of their care system (e.g., France). If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me (correct your comment about first world democracy too please!), but don’t start flinging feces around like a caged monkey and projecting your odious traits onto me.

@ETPro seems to want things that work to be single-payer and things that don’t work to not be single-payer. Maybe I did belabor the topic, but he is as guilty of that as I am.

@Espiritus_Corvus Other than gratuitous argument, willfully false statements such as contained in your last post, and interminable hairsplitting, what the fuck are you doing on this string—or on Fluther for that matter? You embarrass yourself here.
Guys, lets keep the tackles in the open, not sink to slipping in punches and the bottom of the pile. Is it really ant upsetting to get to a point we are insulting eachother?

@bolwerk If you somehow drew that conclusion, you are way off base. When it comes to healthcare, which is often synonymous to the ability to continue to live, I want things to work for us all. I see Single-Payer as the most cost effective solution to that. I have noting against private supplemental policies. I wouldn’t purchase them if I did.

@ETpro: I know you don’t have a problem with optional private supplemental care. If I wasn’t clear, I meant to imply you seem, and I acknowledged all along that maybe I was misinterpreting you, to have a problem with mandatory private supplemental care. I am taking your support for single-payer to mean universal, full-coverage single-payer, as most people mean by it. @Espiritus_Corvus may have a kitten if I split hair (thinking is bad!), but if you want to be really technical America does have two single-payer systems that most Americans can’t take advantage of.*

France, which you cited as a good single-payer model, has a partial single-payer hybrid system. The UK has something closer to a full single-payer system, but France probably has the better system. I actually prefer a universal single-payer system that provides full coverage too, but even a German mandate-style system (similar to Obamacare) works pretty well if properly administered.

* And the funny thing about that: Republikans want to replace the single-payer Medicare system with a voucher system for those 65+. Basically, they want to get rid of Obamacare and replace it with nothing, and they want to get rid of the single-payer system and replace it with something like ObamaCare.

@bolwerk What do you mean by Single Payer?

@ETpro: basically government centralized management (probably financing too) of care. Didn’t I already say this?

@bolwerk I’d be perfectly happy with all costs being covered by the single payer, but I’d far prefer the French System to what we had here before the ACA or what we’ll have once it kicks in. By Single Payer, I mean

@ETpro: I don’t see anything terribly wrong with the French system, but it’s just not exclusively single-payer by any definition. I don’t really see anything wrong with the mandate system either though – ObamaCare is a bad implementation of a mandate system.

The case for single-payer is reduced administrative overhead, which brings costs down, not better quality care.

@bolwerk I’m concerned with the big picture, not hair splitting. The reason the entire developer world outranks the USA in healthcare outcomes and yet the USA spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other nation on Earth is that our broken system of healthcare coverage leaves about 1 out of 6 Americans with NO coverage and a large additional group with junk insurance that won’t help them when the chips are done. We have a fine private healthcare provider system here, and I see no reason to abandon it if they will reign in their excesses. It’s the insurance part of the equation we are failing miserably at. And I don’t give a rat-shit if we only improve that failing 85%. That’s way better than 0%.

@ETpro: That’s pretty much what I was arguing all along. This whole tangent started when I said to @KNOWITALL @Espiritus_Corvus, who insisted the only tenable system was dying in agony better get ur last rites lol single-payer, that outcome is more important than the system. But, though I’m sure it makes the @KNOWITALL @Espiritus_Corvus cry, but you can’t understand healthcare economics without generalizations hairsplitting. Whether the system is a mandate, a single payer-out of pocket hybrid, or purely single-payer, all are a mix of different policy tools that can be used properly or improperly.

A mandate system without subsidies for the poor or unemployed is probably, well, cruel. So is an ineptly run single-payer system with long lines and poor access to care.

@bolwerk If I’m correctly reading through all the places where the text is line-through, then I think we agree.