Trumpcare seems to be DOA. But ACA lives on ...

[_honorentheos]

Why can't they realise that if they want to be protected against damage from disease and accident as the result of chance the most efficient and cheapest way is to pay for it collectively?

Excellent question. Why indeed anyone who is both rational and compassionate have any difficulty realizing that?

The rational argument against is that healthcare access isn't a right to be provided by government. If the goal is to provide access to affordable healthcare but not protect this as a right because it isn't one, the best way to get there is to remove government from the equation and let the markets provide the solutions best suited to the demand. It is honestly a rational argument. And if we separate "fair" from "compassionate" we could argue it might not give everyone exactly the same access or privilege but it might be seen as compassionate in removing interference that punishes people in what might seem unfair in forcing others to subsidize other's access to this privilege.

Using the language of fairness or compassion is a dead end argument, in my opinion. All sides assume they are rational as the most informed have reasons for their views while those who are irrational/emotional exist on all sides as well.

I think people find it hard to clearly say they believe we have a right to health care. It's not easy to defend for a number of reasons, too.

[_Maxine Waters]

Imagine ... why wouldn't Americans prefer that ... if they could get it ... ?

If you were among the people who benefitted from the expansion of Medicaid than yes Obamacare is great. But there were enough people for who Obamacare just meant more taxes for less medical services that a Republican was actually voted into the White House again. I'm surprised as well. I thought the takers outnumbered the taxed and perhaps they still did if you look at the popular vote.

[Guest]

Imagine ... why wouldn't Americans prefer that ... if they could get it ... ?

If you were among the people who benefitted from the expansion of Medicaid than yes Obamacare is great. But there were enough people for who Obamacare just meant more taxes for less medical services that a Republican was actually voted into the White House again. I'm surprised as well. I thought the takers outnumbered the taxed and perhaps they still did if you look at the popular vote.

Ajax, please answer the questions I asked up thread. Your arguments require a foundation that would become more apparent if you could take the time. For your convenience here is the post again so you don't have to go up thread to find it -

Do people have a right to life?

The tension here is between competing rights of the order advocated by John Locke that informed Jefferson's views. If we have a right to life, liberty, and property how do we protect these rights as a society where access to exercise of the right to life could very well require society infringing on individual liberty and making demands they share some of their property to ensure this other right?

On the flip side, can a person truly have a right to liberty if they are born into circumstances not of their making where they lack access to quality education and health care that allows them to pursue their potential? And with it, to obtain and improve "property"?

Is the right to property supreme above all others? Or is there some obligation to share a portion of one's property to protect other rights?

Also, Trump isn't a Republican. He promised a popular expansion of the benefits of the ACA at a lower cost. He didn't explain how it would occur. But clearly Ryan (the Republican here) is more inline with your vision than Trump (the Populist) is, and Ryan got his ass handed to him.

[_Maxine Waters]

Is the right to property supreme above all others? Or is there some obligation to share a portion of one's property to protect other rights

I just find it hypocritical that people expect doctors, nurses, medical equipment salesmen, etc to work for free. Yet nobody criticizes the professor as being uncharitable because he saddles penniless young students with large debts to pay off throughout their life in return for his services.

[Guest]

Why can't they realise that if they want to be protected against damage from disease and accident as the result of chance the most efficient and cheapest way is to pay for it collectively?

Excellent question. Why indeed anyone who is both rational and compassionate have any difficulty realizing that?

The rational argument against is that healthcare access isn't a right to be provided by government.

Why does the US public have to get hung up on asking whether or not health care is one of those things called a 'right' in some kind of 18th century theory of government? It is a pretty well insoluble question as to whether a given individual actually has any 'right' you care to specify - which is no doubt why the framers of the Declaration of Independence had to fall back on saying that it was 'self-evident' that people possessed the 'rights' to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Frankly, do you find that convincing? "Rights' talk is all very well when everybody agrees about the 'right' under discussion, but once a dispute starts there is pretty well no way to settle it rationally.

What is wrong with the majority of people in the country simply deciding that they want the government to spend a proportion of the taxes it raises on providing free and universal health care? And then getting what they want? In a democracy don't people have the power to do that?

There is nothing in the constitution about paying collectively for public roads and bridges, or public works to stop floods drowning people, or school to educate everybody's kids. Nobody argues about whether having those things is a 'right': it is just acknowledged that no government could get elected that tried to put an end to collective provision for those public goods.

So why is health so different?

[Edited for typos]

[_honorentheos]

Is the right to property supreme above all others? Or is there some obligation to share a portion of one's property to protect other rights

I just find it hypocritical that people expect doctors, nurses, medical equipment salesmen, etc to work for free. Yet nobody criticizes the professor as being uncharitable because he saddles penniless young students with large debts to pay off throughout their life in return for his services.

I absolutely agree, no one should expect those in the medical industry to operate purely as a charity. That isn't the same thing as asking if people have a right to life and government has an obligation to protect this right in ways that require balancing the rights to individual liberty and property.

[_EAllusion]

Ajax -

Why should it be the mission of the government to protect you from terrorists, but not protect you from germs? I'm serious. I'm willing to pretend you aren't disingenuous for a moment. I'm curious what your answer is.

[_Maxine Waters]

and police forces (protection against local people who might hurt or kill them).

Americans get what they pay for when it comes to police officers and school teachers.

[_Chap]

Is the right to property supreme above all others? Or is there some obligation to share a portion of one's property to protect other rights

I just find it hypocritical that people expect doctors, nurses, medical equipment salesmen, etc to work for free.

Who, in any country, expects that? Are you taking some kind of happy pill, or did your brain just get switched off by accident?

The question is simply what is the best way to make sure that the work of all those people benefits as many people as possible at an acceptable cost.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think we have the moral high ground on this one and should own it. If the country rejects that form of charitable socialized giving then that's the democracy we have.

I agree and would argue we aren't going to solve the problems involved until we debate and resolve the question of it being either a right or a privilege. If Americans openly reject the idea health care should be a right in a first world nation then so be it. We're playing games where Trump is making promises, and finding support, based on it being felt to be a right while siding with politicians who see it as a privilege that we can't afford to extend to everyone.

I don't think I'd have a problem calling it a privilege, to be honest with you. Although I understand my philosophy is a pretty minor one, I don't think anyone has a fundamental right to anything. The idea that we have a fundamental right to something rubs me the wrong way only because that's just narcissism at play.

Now. If we decide, collectively, to grant one another privileges based on mutual benefit, altruism, whatever then that's fine. The thing most people don't want to consider is when we exert dominance over nature we're stripping other living beings of their existential 'rights', as it were, in order to ensure we have ours. Why do we get to strip other living beings of their rights just because we want their stuff? Because we have a developed mass of nerves? It's all a facade meant to mask our inherent nature which has to be selfish.

Anyway. Human rights just means we've reached a detente with one another, really. Majax18, the White Supremacist who advocated exterminating non-Whites, makes a good point: At what point is enough enough? And then you have my point: At what point do our rights as humans become immoral?

If everyone is entitled to everything just because someone crapped out a copy of themselves, why does that bestow upon them the blessing of having all their needs met at the expense of the natural world?

- Doc