This is well put, but in a situation where the govt is regulating a richest come richest serve capitalist healthcare system, they are indirectly depriving people of healthcare.
In implementing it, sure. But the decision was based on a belief that all people are entitled to healthcare, not that it would save the government money.
The Czech Republic has nothing written in law declaring healthcare a human right. Yet, healthcare accessible to all has existed here since the late 1940s (when of course it was Czechoslovakia). Despite that lack of legal protection of the instution, it continued to exist. It’s only been legally deemed a human right since the CR joined the EU in 2004 because the right to healthcare is in the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights.
There are no such things as philosophical/abstract/religious rights. The closest you get it what the laws and customs either promise to provide you or promise not to interfere with.
The same applies to other necessities, like food, right?
I guess I don’t understand the point of the overall question, since answering “no” doesn’t imply a belief contrary to universal healthcare.
I wouldn’t call education a human right, but I think it’s a very good idea to have publicly-funded free and appropriate education.
The free market doesn’t work in non-elective healthcare. In countries that can afford universal healthcare, it should be provided. Whether you call that a right or not is a pointless argument imo. It’s in the same class as a K-12 education or drivable roads.
You want to explain why? It’s pretty clear cut. We started from the position that our positions on policy are the same, so it follows that our disagreement is largely theoretical.
It logically follows from your position that if the government were to impose an artificially low standard of care on everyone, no matter how low, as long as everyone had equal access, then the citizens have their right to health care.
Sure, it’s a hypothetical scenario, but other rights (e.g. freedom of speech) don’t have this obvious weakness when trying to defend them.
Some of you are not heath care absolutist
There are several ways of conceiving of a right to health care. One is that everyone should have an equal level of health care and no one should have better. Another is that everyone should have a certain minimum level of health care, but it’s okay if rich people pay to have better health care than poor people. A third way is to say that everyone has a right to a certain level of resources going to their health care, even if you are in a poor country and those resources don’t get you much.
I tend towards the second and I have had heated debates with proponents of the first.
From my perspective, a positive right to health care is part of a general right to life. You have the right to not have your life taken (at least, not without due process), but you should also have a right to a life that is worth living, a right to an adequate standard of living that involves minimums for food, clothing, shelter, and, yes, health care.
This doesn’t mean that you have a right to a pampered and pain-free life, but you should have an expectation that you won’t live in the sort of extreme pain that jmakin described, if there is a reasonable and cost-effective way to fix it. I don’t think he has a right to the best possible care, just to enough care so that he can function as a human being in society.
I believe in treating the right to health care as a subset of the right to life in such a way that it trumps any right to property, so that a redistributive plan to take property from one person (i.e. taxes) in order to fund health care for another person is justified.
I think you’re correct in theory but not in practice. In practice modern societies have formal structures of what is a right vs. what is a policy. To get the optimal outcomes things need to be placed properly so that they are enforceable
Is K-12 education considered a right or a policy?
I was saying this even before this thread got started
Canada is wrong
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BLASPHEMY
Why is religion a right?
You think the Govt should lock people up or kill them based on the religion they practice?
Well, sure freedom of speech does. A naive implementation of freedom of speech leads to all sorts of problems - should we allow people to scream “fire” in a crowded theater without repercussion? Should we allow hate speech? Should we allow death threats?
It is the same here. You can find situations where an application of healthcare as a right (I’m going to abbreviate this as HaaR from now on because I hate having to keep typing it out) results in some bad outcomes. But, this is purely philosophical, and I believe the amount of good outcomes overrides the amount of bad ones.
Yea we’re easily going to get down into a rabbit hole of what constitutes the meaning of a “right” because I think we’re approaching this from two different definitions, and I’m far from an expert at philosophical arguments. It is just a belief of mine. Rights should maximize happiness and opportunity for the largest amount of citizens possible. That’s why they exist, no? HaaR would do this.
Anyway, this is all kind of moot IMO, because the international bill of human rights already lists the right to health as one of its rights. Healthcare is obviously a big part of ensuring that.
In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, considered by some to be one of the worst SCOTUS decisions on the 20th century, the Supreme Court held that there is no fundamental right to education in the US under the Constitution.
So, K-12 education is a policy and not a right in the United States.
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And the cool thing is we can create whatever we want. People act like the rules or rights that we have defined in the past were not made up and are sacred or something.
Yeah, this is not anyone’s definition of rights.
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For the same reason that speech and association are rights. Governments have frequently tried to control what people can say, who they can say it to, and how they should worship. The idea that the government should not be able to deprive an individual of the freedom to say what they want or worship how they want are the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
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