The "right" to health care

Relating the “right” to health care to forced labor and slavery:

If the medical service was replaced with physical labor, the scenario is still familiar. “Will you build that deck for me?” “Will I hire you to build my deck?” “OK?” “OK.” Everything looks fine… except for number 4. “I don’t care what you say, you are building my deck whether you agree to my proposal or not.” That looks strikingly like forced labor – which is a euphemism for slavery.
If you apply the statement made in #4 above to most any situation, the result is negative. In labor, it is slavery. In payment, it is robbery. In sex, it is rape. The entire premise is based on the idea that no one has the right to demand something from someone else when they are not in agreement with the terms of that exchange. Put another way, no one has the right to something someone else has.

Indeed.

Comments

Anonymous
PEOPLE do have a right to health care if they pay for it, and if there is a doctor willing to provide it. otherwise, the right does not exist
Anonymous
The problem could be readily solved if the Flexnerites simply gave up their oligopoly. Step aside and let others do the jobs that allopaths are not doing (providing healthcare). You didn’t really expect that the all privileges/no responsibility system of being given a government protected oligopoly would not come with some strings attached?
Anonymous
I had not thought of the analogies you suggest, but I think they are right on! When I showed this to a free-healthcare friend, though, she shot back that the medical staff ARE paid — by the government, just maybe not as much as they want to be paid. I asked her if she felt her services, as a social worker, should be on demand from anyone who demands, at whatever payment ‘the government’ sets (and she’d have no say as to who she’d serve). She said no, because her services are not critical to survival, as medical care is. The discussion went on, but nothing got through to her.
Those who demand ‘free’ healthcare really don’t seem to consider medical personnel as quite fully human, with the same needs and rights and vulnerabilities as any other human. So perplexing! Maybe they never got past the old the-doctor-is-god concept.
Anonymous
Nobody has the “right” to practice medicine. That is a privilege granted by the government. As condition of the grant of that privilege, the government may require doctors to whatever it decides. Don’t like it? Change profession. We’ll just import more doctors from India. They complain less and do a better job, anyway.
Anonymous
I read about a complication of one of those fecal transplants for C. difficile.
The implanted feces embolized to the patient’s brain.
Broca’s area.
Now all the patient can say is “Flexnerite”, over and over.
A tragic story.
Matthew
Anon,
I’ve run into those same people, and their argument really does invariably boil down to, “but I really need health care, so it’s different!” There’s never really anything substantive or intellectually challenging there. It’s frustrating, but if people don’t want to look at something, you can’t make them see it, any more than you can keep an ostrich from burying its head in the sand.
By her logic, it would be perfectly fine to mandate that contractors, chefs, farmers and tailors all work for free, since their products are all vital and necessary to survival as well. I’m sure there are people who feel that their psychologist is a necessity; I guess that’s a right too. Clearly, since the nation has a genuine need for military servicemen also, it would be fine to conscript and not pay soldiers as well.
They never think it all the way through. Not sure why.
Payne Hertz
Speaking of not thinking things through, why is it assumed that a right to health care means indentured servitude for doctors?
Every child in America has the right to a free public education. Does this mean teachers are indentured servants? Of course not. There is no reason to assume health care will be any different. A right to health care could simply mean that we adopt a universal health care system where doctors are paid by the government and have to see patients without discrimination as a condition of employment, and patients have a right to be seen.
No right is absolute, not free speech, voting, property rights or anything else. All are balanced out by competing societal needs, competing rights and available resources. So there is no reason to make these slippery slope arguments that a right to health care will somehow become some kind of absolute right such that people can force doctors to perform heart surgery on them for free whether they need it or not. We have only to look at Europe for an example of what a right to health care looks like in practice, and needn’t venture beyond the borders of La-la Land in search of “what-ifs.” Seriously. Let’s keep the discussion grounded in reality for a change.
Anonymous
The fallacy of your argument payne is that since you have never taken care a patient and billed medicaid, you have no understanding how medicaid denies payment on technicalities depenind on the state (hence free care). Personally, I wouldn’t want my dog to have NYS medicaid. Now turn the whole US into one giant medicaid system (ie single payer). You appear to have little understanding of the issue doctor’s have here. Yes, private insurance company’s do the same thing, the difference is the next time it comes to sign a contract with them, I can tell them to go F*&K themselves (and have). The only one in la-la land is you.
Anonymous
How many MDs are on Medicaid?
Anonymous
>>How many MDs are on Medicaid?
I know one.
Many if not most state medical associations maintain benevolent funds for physicians who become indigent. A few states actually maintained homes for indigent physicians. Here’s the Web page for the Massachusetts Medical Society’s benevolent association for indigent physicians.
http://tinyurl.com/2nfbkz
Some become indigent because of substance abuse, and become impoverished trying to get through rehab. Some become physically disabled from the same diseases that affect everyone else. If the physician is in training or early in practice, the physician may not have resources to survive.
Like anyone else.
Critical Thinker
I am the author of the clip that was included above. I appreciate the comments that have been posted here about it (although I would love to have had them on my blog, Thinking Between The Lines as well!) Anyway, you can read the full text of my examination of “The Fallacy of Health Insurance As A Right” there. (Other good articles as well!)
On the idea of something being free because “Government is paying for it”… let me ask you this: Who is paying for the government?
Also, here’s a thought… why is it up to the Government who may practice medicine and who may not? Ostensibly, it is to ensure our safety. But is that really the case?

The "right" to health care

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