mirgro said:
HappySqurriel said:
mirgro said:
The DoI clearly states Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. How is one person allowed to pursue happiness if they don't have the most basic medical needs met? Even better, how is government protecting your right to life under those same conditions?
If someone could stretch those words into "we can build roads connecting the entire country," then let me tell you, universal healthcare is a far smaller stretch of the words. In the end there are only 3 things a government needs to do, infrastructure, defense, and health. So I really do not see how you can say you want government to do only what it is said it is allowed to do, yet be against universal healthcare.
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It depends on what you mean by "most basic medical needs met" ...
On one end of the spectrum you can have the government providing vaccination clinics to ensure that easy to control communicable diseases don’t impact quality of life; and on the other end of the spectrum you have government paying for superficial plastic surgery because people are depressed about being not really, really, ridiculously good looking.
I’m certain that there is a middle ground that many people who oppose government run healthcare can agree upon; for example, I think there is a level of coverage (regular check-ups, dealing with minor emergencies like broken limbs and stitches) which represent a small fraction of healthcare costs and the bureaucratic cost of insurance companies or the government to pay for them is (probably) greater than the cost of the care.
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Well I had a friend, long sotry short, she worked for a long time, divorce, crisis, she didn't have health care while she moved to a new place and was looking for a job. She had a problem with her shoulder, where she couldn't really move it past certain angles without serious pain. She couldn't even get an X-Ray done to know what was up until she found insurance of some sort. I am sorry, but a system where you can't even get an X-Ray done is an outright broken system. Even in the broken economies of Eastern Europe I can go get an X-Ray done for about 20 USD. Definitely doesn't go along with the "pursuit of happiness" idea.
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From my (limited) understanding knowing many Canadians who have paid out of pocket for medical care in the US, there is very little you can't pay cash for in the American healthcare system; and an X-Ray and medical consultation would probably cost less than $500. While that is certainly not cheap, lack of insurance was certainly not the reason she couldn't get it.
