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In order for you to get the kind of routine medical treatment its advocates describe, somebody has to stop what he is doing and perform work for you-- the doctor who examines you, the clerk who sets up your appointment, the people who built the office or hospital where you get treatment.
If this routine medical treatment is to be called a "right" on par with our "Old Rights", doesn't that mean that you must be given it when needed? And doesn't it follow, then, that others must be compelled to do the normal things needed to treat you?
How does this compulsion upon those others (doctors, clerks etc.) fit in with THEIR rights? They "have" to treat you?
How can these things possibly be "rights", if they force others to serve you?
You hear an awful lot about our "rights" these days. And justly so-- our rights, in this country, are our most valuable possession, outside of life itself. And some people say that our basic rights, are even more important than life. When Patrick Henry defiantly told the British government during colonial times, "Give me liberty or give me death!", he was stating that he considered a life without liberty, to be worse than no life at all (death).
So, what are our rights?
The Declaration of Independence mentions a few, and implies that there are others. So does the Constitution-- in fact, it names many, and categorically states that those aren't the only rights people have.
The Declaration says that among our rights, are "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". It also says that these were given to us "by [our] Creator". Take that as you will, depending on whatever religious outlook you hold. But one of the implications is that, wherever our rights came from, they were NOT granted us by government, or by our fellow men at all. We had them long before government existed. And these various government documents simply say that government cannot take them away or interfere with them.
Here we refer, of course, only to normal law-abiding citizens. The Constitution contains the phrase "except by due course of law" in many places. If you rob someone, assault him, destroy his property, murder him etc., then you can legitimately be deprived of liberty (you go to jail), property (you get fined), or even life in some extreme cases (Death Penalty). Outside of such lawbreaking, your rights are held inviolate.
But today, our "rights" seem to be multiplying without end. This is not necessarily bad-- as we said, rights are extremely valuable. But, are we getting ahead of ourselves, granting to ourselves so many things under the name of "rights"?
"Old Rights"
Some are pretty indisputable, such as the ones mentioned in the Declaration. The ones mentioned in the Constitution, especially in the first ten Amendments (which was even called the "Bill of Rights" by its authors), are similarly vital... though they seem to be undergoing a methodical erosion. Freedom of religion, right to peaceably assemble, freedom of speech and of the press, the right to keep and bear arms, etc. all are very basic, and it is scary to think of trying to exist in a country in which any of these do not exist.
New "rights"
But lately we have heard about other "rights", such as the right to work, the right to decent medical treatment, the right to a decent standard of living. These all sound salutary-- what kind of society would we have, if working for a living were forbidden, decent health care were forbidden, etc.?
But there is a big gap between "forbidden" and "compulsory". The rights found in the country's founding documents, are compulsory, to the extent that we all have them whether we want them or not (who wouldn't want them?), and no one can take them away.
What about, say, the right to decent medical treatment? Those who favor this "right", point out that they don't necessarily mean the rare, exotic, super-expensive treatments; nor "elective" procedures such as cosmetic liposuction or a luxury suite in the hospital. They usually mean that, if you get sick or injured, you have the "right" to have a doctor look at you, make sure the problem isn't unusually dangerous, and administer the routine treatments needed to help you on the way back to good health. An absence of such routine treatment, could occasionally put your life in peril, obviously-- a simple broken bone could lead to infection if untreated, and possibly far more. But there are differences between the "Old Rights", as we've called the ones in the founding documents, and these "New 'Rights'".
Your "right to life" protects something that no man gave you-- you simply had it, from the day you were born. Nobody had to go to extraordinary effort to create it for you, outside of natural processes that move forward on their own without deliberate effort or guidance by humans, government, etc.
Same with the "right to liberty". You were your own man, as it were, the day you were born. Nobody had to go to special effort to create that status for you. In fact, they would have had to go to considerable effort to take those things away, by deliberately coming to you and killing you; or by building a jail and imprisoning you etc. If they leave you alone, you have life and liberty, and can pursue happiness. They have to work at it to deprive you of those things.
The Difference in the "New 'Rights'"
But this isn't the case with what we've called "New 'Rights'". In order for you to get the kind of routine medical treatment its advocates describe, somebody has to stop what he is doing and perform work for you-- the doctor who examines you, the clerk who sets up your appointment, the people who built the office or hospital where you get treatment.
If this routine medical treatment is to be called a "right" on par with our "Old Rights", doesn't that mean that you must be given it when needed? And doesn't it follow, then, that others must be compelled to do the normal things needed to treat you?
Uh-oh.
How does this compulsion upon those others (doctors, clerks etc.) fit in with THEIR rights? They "have" to treat you? What if their schedules are full-- do they have to bump another patient to make room for you? What if they were spending precious quality time with their families-- do they have to abandon their own kids, to fulfill your "right" to treatment that only they can give? Doesn't this fit the description of "involuntary servitude"?
This is an important difference between the rights envisioned by the country's founders, and the new "rights" advocated by more modern pundits. In order to secure your "old rights", people merely had to leave you alone... do nothing to bother you. in fact, they were required to. But these new so-called "rights", required that people go out of their way to actively contribute to you.
And that "requirement", in fact violates THEIR rights-- specifically, their right to liberty. They must be left free to live their lives as THEY chose-- free from compulsion to come and help you out. If they want to help you, that's fine-- often it's the decent and moral thing to do. But they cannot be forced to help you, no matter how much you need the help.
These new "rights", are in fact not rights at all. They are obligations upon others, imposed on them without their agreement or consent.
Beware of announcements that you have the "right" to this or that. Ask yourself if this "right", forces someone else to do something for you, that he didn't previously agree to. If it does, it's not a "right" possessed by you. It's an attempt by the announcer, to force others into servitude... an attempt, in fact, to violate the others' rights.
An inmate breaks their leg in jail. What do you suggest we do? Leave them untreated in their cell, or send them to get their injury treated?
An inmate breaks their leg in jail. What do you suggest we do? Leave them untreated in their cell, or send them to get their injury treated?
Obviously a completely different situation, since the inmate has given up some of his rights by committing his crime and getting tried and sentenced for it.
How about addressing the points made in the OP you quoted, instead of trying to change the subject?
It says was it involves quite clearly, so if you don't want to adhere to international treaties or international laws then don't sign them in the first place, simple as that.
As I thought, you are unable (or unwilling) to answer the question, so you keep trying to change the subject.
How did Americans come to think health care was a "right"? Answer: Government interference!
Health care insurance started going downhill in this country during the Great Depression and World War II, despite the numerous technical advances that were made during that period.
Then-President FDR clamped huge restrictions onto many parts of the economy during the Depression (resulting in that depression stretching out further than any ever had in world history), and they became even worse during WWII. One of them was wage and price controls, which became onerous as many able-bodied men joined the armed services to fight in the war.
Attracting talented people to fulfill the jobs they left was tough enough with so many good men joining up, and the govt's wage controls made the situation worse when employers found they couldn't offer higher wages to get people to hire on. Whether this was justifiable, not to say effective, by the war emergency is debatable.
Employers screamed bloody murder as their businesses approached collapse due to unfilled jobs, and while government refused to lift its wage and price controls, they announced the employers could offer benefits in lieu of pay to attract workers. One benefit was a tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance.
This helped somewhat, but with an employer only able to offer a few insurance plans, it locked employees into fairly uncompetitive market unless he changed jobs. And FDR's relatively new policy of "tax withholding" was extended to the employee part of the payments for insurance, further insulating the employee from the gut-check of having to write weekly or monthly checks to the insurance company.
Employers offered "Cadillac" plans in their efforts to attract workers, and the employees seldom saw the actual cost of those expensive plans, which often paid for routine medications and office visits formerly not covered by real insurance plans. That, plus the lack of competition most insurance companies found themselves facing, removed a lot of their impetus to pare costs. And employees became used to health care which "seemed free", and started thinking of it as something akin to a "right", since it (sort of) appeared to cost nothing.
When the war ended, government did NOT remove the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance even though the circumstances that made it desirable were now gone. And so health insurance has existed in a strange nether world ever since for most people, with employees of a company locked into the few (or one) insurance plan offered by that company with little likelihood they will ever leave it. At the same time it appeared to cost little or nothing, with even routine services (far beyond the major-event coverage real insurance is for) included and seeming "complimentary".
Fast forward to the 21st century. Now we have self-serving politicians screaming from the rooftops that health care is somehow a "right", though it comes nowhere close to resembling a right to liberty, right to speech, right to self-defense etc. - all of which are based on the fundamental right to be left alone and to associate only voluntarily with others. And most people, used to generations of "free" health care that was caused by that very government long ago, are actually believing it, despite the clear unworkability of the idea, the unnecessary expense and clumsiness of one-size-fits-all (or even three-sizes-fit-all) policies administered from thousands of miles away in Washington.
The cockeyed notion that we somehow have a "right" to have a broken arm set or an infection cleaned and treated by others, came (as so many cockeyed ideas do) from government intrusion into private matters in the first place.
We should be thankful that the government didn't offer tax breaks for food purchased by one's employer. Or by now, the same deluded people would be screaming that they had a "right" to food (some actually believe this one too, after generations of food stamps). Ditto for rent, phone service, etc., all of which have been tainted at one time or another by government programs to make them nearly "free".
Weaning Americans off these destructive addictions to "free" necessities and "rights" that aren't rights and never were, will be painful, as breaking an addiction always is. But it is no less necessary, if we are to survive as sovereign citizens in a free society.
Most of this animosity towards "free" healthcare is white people being angry at the idea of their tax dollars going to poor minorities. It's the same reason for the hate of "welfare" and "foodstamps".
Poor choice of words since illness and disease do not care about your bank account.
First, when it comes to any diseases that can spread, yes, people have the "right" to get those treated or get vaccinations against them, regardless of their money. Only a staggeringly greedy and stupid civilization would think it makes sense to not treat infectious diseases among the poor, as if the diseases will somehow honor the bank accounts of the rich and leave them alone. Look at the Black Plague - it didn't politely avoid the rich and powerful when it killed over 1/4 of Europe's population.
Next up, you have the illnesses where society pays for them one way or another. Again, the selfish and ignorant like to pretend that if we deny medical care to the poor, the "problem will go away." Nope - you'll just end up paying for that decision in some other way: disability, reduced worker output, etc. I'm not saying this level of health care should be free, but the total costs need to be looked at. Often times it is actually cheaper to restore the health of a person - even a poor one - vs. having them become disabled or otherwise unable to contribute to society, feed their families, etc.
Finally, you have the strictly optional forms of health care - most cosmetic surgery, etc. This does not deal with treating contagious diseases and does not produce a drag effect on society if left untreated, so when it comes to fully elective health-care, people should pay for as they would any other luxury.
Of course, nobody cares what I write... we live in a society where angry old coots want the poor to die of sickness and yet expect insurance to keep covering their Viagra...
3 Stars for you!
Would have been 4, but you left out seniors.
We all hope to be old coots!
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How did Americans come to think health care was a "right"? Answer: Government interference!
