This is a very good question. Most protections that are instituted as rights derive from (not surprisingly) some historical wrong. Freedom of Religion in practical terms means that the government or private interests can’t persecute you because if your Religion. We have that because of actual historical instances of said persecution.
This is actually a good framework for establishing rights. Rights tend to protect you from other powerful interests.
Agreed but this is not at all different than access to healthcare. Your differences are at best semantic.
My pony needs rights.
Freedom of religion is kind of redundant. If you have the right to assemble and to speech, what does religion add?
Again denying my healthcare has real world effects on me. Denying my right to pray to the make believe BFF of my choice has none.
Even so, I understand why religion is a right. I’m simply saying there is zero difference between it and healthcare other than an accident of history.
No one is saying it’s absolute.
If it was my religion to kill all redheads because their souls are possessed by Satan, that wouldn’t fly either.
Maybe if you want to list all of the exceptions to health care being a right, we can do this properly.
It’s reasonable to talk about the taxonomy of rights.
We can speak of universal, fundamental, natural, inalienable rights that cannot be taken away from any human being. A government that tries to do so marks itself as illegitimate. Then, there are legal rights, those that are not fundamental in nature, but which are bestowed by law.
If health care is the former, then government is obligated to come up with a way of providing it. If it is the latter, then government is under no obligation to recognize a right to health care. If government is organized under the principle that it is meant to maximize happiness and opportunity for the largest amount of citizens possible (utilitarianism), the maybe health care falls under that aegis.
If we assume ones life is a right then it logically follows preservation of said life is a right, aka healthcare.
It’s a utilitarian definition, so maybe Sklansky?
We’ve already dealt with this, so I’ll just quote from up thread.
I’m sure someone could find some research on mental health benefits, stress reduction, etc. at least for some people.
This is going more in the SMP direction than I’m interested in, but there’s obviously a difference between positive and negative rights.
The government promising not to deprive you of the right to speak doesn’t compel anyone else to act in a particular way.
The government promising to provide health care compels someone else to actually provide those products and services, the same way that promising a national defense compels someone else to provide that protection.
Unless you mean that the right to healthcare simply means that the government will not act to deny you from whatever healthcare products/services you are otherwise able to obtain. But that would be a silly definition.
I’m voting for the ‘create new rights as abuses happen’ model. Healthcare to a reasonable standard should be a right if it officially isn’t.
As someone who has been on both the giving and receiving end of the abuses of the current health insurance system I think it’s done more than enough to qualify for a first principles fix.
I don’t think there is zero difference. One is a negative right, one is a positive right. That’s a pretty big difference.
It’s a recognition that religion riles up people more than other forms of association or expression. You’re basically saying that all speech and assemblies matter when saying that there should be freedom of religion is like saying black lives matter.
You driving your car could kill me, doesn’t mean I can access my right to life to block you from driving a car.
The simplest and most legally consistent way to provide HC is as Canada does it - we should, so we do. The should derived entirely from my compassion for my fellow citizens, it has nothing to do with their rights. If I didn’t support giving them HC I wouldn’t be persecuting them, I’d just be an asshole.
This is an interesting question. Maybe there are religious practices that don’t neatly fall under speech or assembly.
Probably religion is separately listed in the Constitution for historical reasons. I guess freedom of the press is also redundant since their speech isn’t really more or less protected than a regular slob’s.
This is also a very superficial presentation of freedom of religion. I am also an atheist, but I also want an institutional prohibition on religious discrimination. Would you easily dismiss religious protections if, say, only Catholics were permitted to vote in the next elections?
We all remember when the current President of the USA blocked travel from “Muslim countries”, right?
Maybe in 250 years we will say this about healthcare.
This is a gross. People are literally thrown in concentration camps, killed, or banned from traveling based on religion today.