Should healthcare be a human right?

It’s not the same:

It might be the same if you were guaranteed health care when you get shot or choked out by a cop. I think that should definitely be a right.

Even if it is a human right, it’s OK if some nations don’t provide it? As long as they think they can’t. Then there is no violation? Is that right?

Did someone say it is?

I dont think education is really a right in Canada either, there’s a bunch of Provincial Acts that deliver it but no overarching human right to education (I dont think).

It definitely feels like this is all a definitional issue. Some people are defining rights as protections, some people are defining rights as essential policy. We should just give people HC and have a round of beers.

It seems to me that before arguing about the definition of “right” people should decide on the definition of “healthcare”. Does it, for example include providing the more expensive option of a bypass operation when hypothetically, a (generally considered) almost as effective angioplasty is much cheaper?

(If it was up to me I wouldn’t be helping you guys come to conclusions as I’m not even indirectly being paid for it. But I am afraid that withholding my advice for purely monetary reasons will bring heat from the United Nations.)

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I was going to go there as step two.

Step one – define rights
Step two – define health care

In my head, I played out reversing the order, and I preferred this way. There is more generality this way. As it stands, we’re likely never going to get to step two.

Right: Something that society has deemed important enough for every to have it.

Even if they literally can’t provide it? By this definition most of the poor countries of the world are committing numerous and egregious human rights violations on the reg.

That’s a different argument.

Even countries that can afford it cut off benefits somewhere.

idk how Canada works, but in USA#1, our Bill of Rights is basically just a list of stuff the gov’t can’t do.

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Ironically one of the worst things about our system is how it over resources some patients at end of life. There’s some sick shit happening out there. Six figure sums are being spent to keep old people alive in excruciating pain for 30-60 more days all the time. Medicare, of course, is paying for it.

What’s hilarious is that despite being legally obligated to pay for all this ethically dubious medical care health insurance companies very much do not want to compete with Medicare.

And we’re back to where we started again.

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They were different until the Warren Court. (Don’t nit me up here, I read the last phrase in part A)

Yeah, Clovis’ brilliant argument seems to be “Well the government can’t NOT provide you with healthcare”. Chessmate, motherfuckers.

Wikipedia does better:

Human rights are moral principles or norms[1] that describe certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly protected in municipal and international law.

The reference to human behavior is highly relevant, as most commonly accepted rights are designed to protect people from the actions of others (persecution, discrimination, subjugation). I personally feel like this is a useful distinction from the services that a government should deliver to its citizens, which are best codified in laws and regulations, IMO.

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Should healthcare be a human right?

Define “should”.
Define “healthcare”.
Define “be”.
Define “human right”.

I am a deep thinker.

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My overall point is it’s all made up anyways. Where is wireless’s brother to help us define terms when we need him?

Not that it’s has anything to do with the thread, but your understanding of these two procedures is flawed. I’m overgeneralizing a bit, but anything that can be fixed with an angioplasty is generally fixed that way. Not only is it cheaper, it is far less invasive and much quicker recovery. No one in their right mind would want a bypass when an angioplasty will take care of the problem.

Sometimes things are so blocked up that an angioplasty won’t cut it. Those people generally get bypass surgeries.

Phrasing the question in this way is naturally going to lead to philosophical derails like “what even is a right?”

Another way to phrase the question is: Should the government adopt a policy of providing health care to everyone? And if so, what type of health care should be included or excluded from such a policy?

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The definitions of “right” and “health care” seem independent, so it doesn’t matter which one comes first.

It seems very likely that we can agree that if there is a right to health care, then it means that there is some government obligation to provide health care to citizens. Defining what a “right” is has more to do with whether there is an inherent obligation on government or whether it there must be some sort of legal process for bestowing that right upon the people.

I’ve suggested that one view of this is that government should give all people an equal level of health care. That could mean that everyone deserves the best possible care, but that seems impractical, so maybe it means allocating resources so that everyone suffering from the same ailments gets the same level of care. Some who believe this also believe in banning any form of supplemental care to prevent anyone getting better care than someone else.

My preferred form is to guarantee people a certain minimal standard of care. That standard is something that can be argued about if people agree on this concept of a right to health care.

Another idea would be to agree to devote a certain level of resources to health care and to ration that based on some set of rules to be defined later.

Well if that was the question Grue asked his uncle, we never would have had this thread to begin with.

The way this thread has gone is no surprise whatsoever, which I why I requested jmakin start a new one, which he helpfully did to spare the mods from a painful thread excision.

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