The Las Vegas Review Journal gets it right as it mocks the opinion of a management professor:
“This is basically the way medicine works in a Third World country,” Temple University health care management professor David Barton Smith told The AP. “There’s no acknowledgement of any universal right to health care.”Of course, there is no universal “right” to health care. A true right doesn’t impose an obligation on others. And when people such as Mr. Smith insist that health care be “free,” they conveniently forget that literally trillions of tax dollars would be required to convert the country’s semi-private system into a public one.
Related posts:
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- Do we almost have universal health care already?
- Is universal health care worth the long waits?
- MedGadget takes on universal health care
- Universal health care: Slim chance?
- Free health care in Hawaii
- Universal health care oxymoron
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{ 12 comments }
If there’s no universal right to it, why do doctors always tell us they need liability protection so this or that specialty will be available in BFE?
Because the two are completely independent concepts, and have nothing to do with one another.
It’s like asking why the sky is blue if the water is green. There’s just no connection.
Nonsense. If you advocate to people that they are losing physicians and therefore physicians need special treatment in order to stay, that implies that they have a right to a physician in their hometown.
Yet then on the other hand, you tell them that they have no right to a physician, they have to wonder why they gave you the special treatment in the first place.
Bottom line is EMTALA says ER’s cannot refuse to see anyone. The government has stepped in and said there is a “right” to emergency care.
That’s all well and good. But now the floodgate is open. To turn around and say it’s not a right is trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Most doctors are ethical and don’t want to see patients get shoddy or no treatment. But they can’t get paid enough by anyone to make up the loss you take on such noble ventures.
If a person gets a neurosurgical injury, and a hometown ER can’t get a Nuerosurgeon to come, I think people would sue the hosptial or the ER for not having access to professionals to handle such a situation. THAT is why the liability protection. Or maybe we should just expose these specialists to ALL the laibility for NO profit. Good idea!
Holy non sequiturs, Batman! CJD’s at it again!
The fact that doctors need incentives to go to less desirable venues for employement has literally and absolutely nothing to do with a right to health care. That fact certainly doesn’t imply physicians have a right to stay anywhere in particular, go anywhere in particular, or that a patient has a right to their labor.
Only a lawyer could even pretend that made sense. And he wonders why no one on this board takes him seriously.
Wow.
“If a person gets a neurosurgical injury, and a hometown ER can’t get a Nuerosurgeon to come, I think people would sue the hosptial or the ER for not having access to professionals to handle such a situation. “
Why would you think that? Has such a suit ever occurred, much less been acceptable.
Matthew,
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you have to get so personal. Just sit back and think for a little while before you get too excited and say yet another silly thing.
I know it’s difficult, but I believe in you.
anon 1:34 –
imagine the following:
gangbanger joe is out on the town with his gang buddies in los angeles & gets shot in the back by another gang member. 911/ems is activated & they take him to an ER. no neurosurgeon is available to come in to attempt to salvage some lower extremity use due to spinal cord injury.
gangbanger joe is a quad now for life.
do you really think that a lawsuit WOULDN’T follow???
A “right” to healthcare? Absolutely not. On the other hand, consumers should not be forced into purchasing through a market that has been subject to the anti-competitive measures that our healthcare system has been put through.
“do you really think that a lawsuit WOULDN’T follow???”
Has one? I mean, it’s not like that situation hasn’t happened. So where’s this lawsuit? Even better, where’s the payout?
This is what passes for a sensible editorial in Nevada?
“A true right doesn’t impose an obligation on others.” Really? It sure seems to me that true rights, like, say, freedom of speech, or the right to assembly, or the right against self-incrimination, without exception impose obligations on others. In the specific case of constitutional rights like these, the obligation is on the government and its agents not to censor, or break up meetings, or beat confessions out of people.
As such, regardless of whether or not you believe people have a right to medical care, criticizing it because such a right would create obligations for others is nothing short of moronic.
The article is also incorrect in claiming that “virtually every” of the major democratic presidential candidates are proposing an “eventual” single-payer schemes. I haven’t looked at Clinton’s plan, but neither Obama’s nor Edward’s plan is single-payer.
Anon 8:36,
The examples you give are obligations of others, in particular the government, to NOT engage in certain behavior, not an obligation to engage in that behavior. This is the difference between negative and positive rights. The rights enshrined in the Constitution are negative rights, none are positive.
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