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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (3733)	1/11/2008 11:01:21 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

It is a different debate if what you are saying is that under our current economic circumstances universal right to healthcare is not feasible and/or affordable. But somehow I get the sense that you do not want universal right to health care even if it were affordable. That is something entirely different. Yes, it is different. This is what I was trying to explain to John yesterday. (John doesn't care about the difference. For him it's just "fer me or agin me.") I operate in two different modes, the principled and the pragmatic. I didn't start out a libertarian. It's something I came to appreciate and internalize after decades of experience with systems. I realized that collectivism, although it feels noble and can arguably be construed as fair, isn't workable in our society. I thought about what works best and developed my principles from those practicalities. Having done so, I found that the new principles resonated with other parts of me, such as my left-libertarianism, in a synergistic way. [I laugh now remembering an incident that occurred in the US Embassy in Mexico when I was a student. I argued for centralization against states rights on the grounds that it was more efficient. At the time, I did not understand the economic meaning of efficient, only the operations meaning.] So I can see why you are having trouble interpreting the duality. I question the right to health care based on feasibility/affordability. And my principles go hand and hand with that. I don't reject the government like so many on the right out of distrust or on a constitutional basis. I'm a retired fed, for heavens sake, a public system designer and analyst. I know when and how the government works well. I like to think I contributed to it doing so in places where I had influence. I am questioning the right to health care based first on cost, which is what the issue is almost entirely about. The assessment that it would be too costly is compatible with and goes hand in hand with my carefully hewn principles and with the constitution. It all plays together neatly, which is reinforcing for me but probably confusing for others. If the right to health care could be implemented in an affordable way, I would reevaluate my stand, which would mean disassembling my whole set of principles. I would do that, though, if it could be demonstrated that I am likely mistaken about the cost. That's why I ask so many questions. That I get no answers increases my confidence in my assessment of the cost.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (3733)	1/11/2008 12:32:19 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

But somehow I get the sense that you do not want universal right to health care even if it were affordable. I don't think you can properly have a right to health care. You can have a government program that pays for or even directly provides health care for every citizen or every resident. But that isn't the same thing as having a real right to universal health care. I don't believe in "positive rights". You have a right to free speech, that amounts to a right to not have someone force you to shut up. You generally have a right not to be murdered, not a right to live. (Murder is a violation of your rights, clumsily slipping off the side of a cliff is not). In a very general sense its a violation of your rights to abuse you unjustly. Its not a violation of your rights not to provide assistance to you, not to pay for what you need, or not to transfer resources to you. You don't have a right to take from others or to have a third party take from others on your behalf. --- Note on terms. Rights can mean natural rights, legal rights, constitutional rights (which is just a special form of legal rights), contractual rights, and perhaps other things. Any time I just use "rights" and the context doesn't clearly indicate anything else read it as "natural rights". In the case of "a right to medical care", not only is there no such natural right, but in a general sense there is no right of any kind in the US currently, but of course if the law or constitution changes there could be a legal and/or constitutional right, and if you pay for health insurance you have contractual rights in terms of payment for health care.