| superchunk said: It worked prior to the 70's, so the financial crashes before that didn't happen? Keep in mind the worst of them all, The GD, was fixed through regulation of the free market and many of the very same policies Bush started to do and Obama is currently doing. The reason medicare has issues is due to costs. Fix the free market that has allowed tape to costs $100 in hospitals and medicare would be just fine. Healthcare can't be like other markets. Its vital for survival and necessary for all. Not just those with plenty. Therefore a single system to pool everyone's contributions while reducing raw material cost would be successful, for everyone. Yes, we are the most giving nation in the world. But, that has nothing to do with our discussion. I said those against universal healthcare and generally any social program are simply selfish. Not America as a whole or generic term. |
Whether or not someone is selfish is a subjective assessment at best - being selfish is after all different from demanding a say in how the fruits of your labors are used. Someone might be more than willing to share, for example, provided they are choosing to share and not being forced into it by a government mandate.
What is objective is that people have the right to be selfish as, legally speaking, we are gaurunteed the rights to life, liberty, and property. But no rights to healthcare are mentioned.
But even if the constitution had stipulated health-care specifically as a right afforded to all people the argument for a government control and payment of this right is quite weak anyways.
Unless you also wish to argue that the government must provide a gun to anyone wishing to exercise their 2nd amendment rights or a weekly newspaper column for their 1st amendment rights. You might have a right to access something but it does not mean you have the right to insist the government provide it for you.
This is notion of a right to be given healthcare is confiscatory - you want things confiscated from others (violating their rights) to supply rights to another. This of course does not have any basis within the constitution as you have a right to keep and bear arms but you do not have the right to confiscate guns from the gun shop to that end. Nobody has a right to confiscate the goods and services produced by another person because each person has a right to their property which both goods and services qualify as. I can no more demand drugs for the hypothetical right to healthcare than I could demand a gun or ammo from gun shop for the right to keep and bear arms.
What I do not understand is why liberals push for the government to legislate what is so clearly an ethical and moral issue. I mean the entire argument being made is that it is amoral and or unethical to ignore a person who needs care. Obviously nobody wants a man to die who could have gotten care - even if its a financial issue. What I fail to understand is why suddenly its acceptable for the government to legislate that moral and ethical position when things like abortion are tantamount to treason in the eyes of those promoting this cause. How can you advocate moral relativism while arguing that healthcare is an absolute moral right?
None of this even gets into the issues mentioned previously of whether or not national healthcare is any good to begin with (the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it is downright awful - to put it nicely).
More than any of that though I would ask how anyone can advocate (snip) - got interrupted and lost my train of thought hitting submit by accident - I'll just leave it as is.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
