Aielyn said:
badgenome said:
It isn't a right. Rights are things that are inherent unless someone takes it away from you. Your right to speak freely, for example. You cannot possibly have the right to something that someone else has to provide for you.
Treating things as rights has a lot to do with why nearly every developed country is trying to contain spiraling health costs. Once the government and other third parties get involved, it turns into chaos with everyone trying to make theirs by screwing everyone else. For instance, my 84-year-old grandmother had a doctor's appointment to go in and be told exactly what she had already been told two weeks prior just so that the doctor could get paid by Medicare for a doctor's visit. But for things like Lasik surgery and breast implants that we don't treat as rights, it's almost shockingly expensive. As soon as they do become a "right", as all things inevitably do, a new set of tits will run about $250k.
"Oh, you just need a better government comprised of TOP MEN!" You might pooh pooh the idea of smaller government, but it's a hell of a lot easier to reform a smaller government (not to mention see exactly what needs reforming to begin with) than it is to reform a slovenly gargantuan like the US government.
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First of all, no, a "right" is something granted by society to people. You have the right to legal representation in court, for instance, but that's not something that you have "inherently" got. Indeed, the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth amendments of your bill of rights establish rights that have nothing to do with things that a person inherently has. They're protections put into the system in order to make things better. And the right to health care is similarly a protection.
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Actually, if you follow the reasoning of Locke, then rights are inalienable things given to humanity by God. It is not something that is given by anyone, but something that comes with being human.
Of course, if one wants to define ethics in a context beyond rights, then you get freed of all the limitations and weaknesses of right based ethics systems. Right-based ethics systems do a poor job of prioritizing, because it will often come down to the person who fights the strongest getting what they want. Individuals who maybe shouldn't be harmed, who fail to defend themselves, get overrun.
