What Does It Mean to Have a "Right" to Health Care?
I got a little dash of food poisoning, so I'm going to post briefly this evening and post more on Wednesday.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, I think it was from Camembert I left out, and I of course decided that I am very likely dying of listeria.
Luckily, three capsules of activated charcoal seem to be a little-known cure for it -- along with three or so hours of sleep with another little-known cure: the snout of a very cute dog on one's neck.
Getting to the subject of this blog post, there's a smart piece at Reason by Sheldon Richman on ideas to keep in mind while the debate rages over what should succeed the "Affordable" Care Act (which ruined my previously affordable care). An excerpt:
Despite the popular misconception, health care is not beyond economic law; it is not a free good that falls like manna from heaven. It has to be produced, which means people must mix their scarce labor with scarce resources to produce the things used to perform the medical services we want. It would be foolish to expect them to donate their labor and resources because other people need them. They have their own lives to live and livelihoods to earn. It would be wrong to compel them. They are not slaves.In other words, no one can have a right to medical care or insurance, that is, to the labor services and resources of other people--including the taxpayers. We hear a great deal about the need to respect all people; well, respecting people must include respecting their liberty and justly acquired possessions. Without that, "respect" is hollow.
Politicians, of course, can declare a right to medical care, but those are mere words. What counts is what happens after the declaration. Since a system in which everyone could have, on demand, all the medical care they wanted at no cost would be unsustainable, the so-called right to medical care necessarily translates into the power of politicians and bureaucrats to set the terms under which medical services and products may be provided and received. This is crucial: a government-declared "right" (that does not reflect natural rights) is no right at all; it is rather a declared government power to allocate goods and services.
Natural rights--which boil down to the single right not to be aggressed against--require only that one abstain from aggression. Thus all can exercise their rights at once without conflict. On the other hand, government-invented "rights"--such as the right to medical care--cannot be exercised at the same time; the potential for conflict is built in. For example, a person cannot use his own money as he wishes if the government health care system takes it by force through taxation to pay for other people's services.
I hope you,feel better soon, Amy!
crella at March 22, 2017 5:59 AM
You are probably correct about the food poisoning but Wife had something similar happen and it turned out to be a nasty viral thing that took two antibiotics and two LONG weeks to take care of.
The lab work and following investigative work did discover that she has gall bladder stones aplenty and will have that sucker taken out on Monday.
Take care.
Bob in Texas at March 22, 2017 6:02 AM
"In other words, no one can have a right to medical care or insurance, that is, to the labor services and resources of other people--including the taxpayers."
If you are truly having this type of discussion w/someone you probably should just stick to "White people are evil." to save your breath.
Bob in Texas at March 22, 2017 6:04 AM
Bob, just ask them if they feel that the 13th amendment should repealed. Then we can enslave health practicioners and make them treat us!
I R A Darth Aggie at March 22, 2017 6:32 AM
Most of these people yakking about a "right to healthcare" aren't even aware that modern healthcare didn't exist until the early 1900s. Until then, your doctor was as likely to kill you as your disease was, if not more so.
Until less than 100 years ago, most doctors were apprenticed and never went to medical school. The Scientific Method was not applied to medicine (it was not considered a "science") and folk remedies were the most common treatment for a variety of ailments. In the Old West, your doctor was more often than not, the town barber. Even as late as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, doctors were still bleeding patients with leeches to get out the "bad blood."
Germ Theory was slow to be widely accepted and when it finally was, it kicked off a revolution in healthcare, a revolution that has us living longer and healthier than ever before, that has us curing diseases that previously wiped out entire populations.
What they're telling you that you have a "right" to is the hard work of hundreds of scientists, doctors, and researchers, of less than 100 years of scientific progress.
Conan the Grammarian at March 22, 2017 7:26 AM
I seem to remember that Florence Nightingale was highly skeptical of the germ theory, despite believing firmly in cleanliness. I'll have to look that up again.
And reportedly, President James Garfield might not have died in 1881 because of his assassin - IF the doctors had only washed their hands and/or sterilized their instruments before probing him. (Joseph Lister's work was known at the time in the U.S. - but doctors in much of Europe and the U.S. didn't take hand-washing that seriously until the 1890s or so. I like to say, jokingly: "Maybe God didn't WANT us to discover germs? Maybe a high death rate was His way of 'providing' to the populace?")
lenona at March 22, 2017 10:54 AM
I don't know her opinion on Germ Theory, but Florence Nightingale's statistical charts on causes of death in the Army of the East (she was also a pioneer in statistical data visualization) provided pretty strong arguments in favor keeping a hospital area clean.
She showed that the majority of deaths were due to non-battle factors in a clearly understood chart now known as the polar area diagram (and sometimes called the Nightingale Rose).
Conan the Grammarian at March 22, 2017 12:23 PM
I can come up with a definition for a *right* far easiler than I can come up with a definition for *health care*.
If it means subsidized liver transpants for 60 year old alcoholics or free hip replacements for grossly overweight octogenarians, I think the coverage has already gone too far.
Isab at March 22, 2017 5:04 PM
"You are probably correct about the food poisoning but Wife had something similar happen and it turned out to be a nasty viral thing that took two antibiotics and two LONG weeks to take care of."
If it was viral, the antibiotics were actually contraindicated.
The two weeks were probably what fixed it.
Isab at March 22, 2017 5:11 PM
"You are probably correct about the food poisoning but Wife had something similar happen and it turned out to be a nasty viral thing that took two antibiotics and two LONG weeks to take care of."
If it was viral, the antibiotics were actually contraindicated.
The two weeks were probably what fixed it.
Isab at March 22, 2017 5:12 PM
I seem to recall reading that when the first antibiotics came out, Nightingale said she considered them wonderful, but feared that some doctors and nurses might let their concern for cleanliness slip if they thought the drug would take care of any problems.
Firehand at March 29, 2017 6:09 PM
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