Is healthcare a basic human right?

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**Belphegor**

Frazzled: Ah I see we have a US Congressman on the board today...

A Vote for Belphegor is a vote to screw you over in the specific way that you pre-designed with your* own poorly constructed permissive moral codes.
A vote for Belphegor is a vote for 'due onto others'.

VOTE BELPHEGOR TODAY!

*not yours Frazzled, I wouldn't dream of having your vote until we sign a nine-hundred & ninety-nine page binding agreement that had a sunset set minimum of of one-hundred years and a day.
As a professional courtesy, of coarse

**barlio**

Kilkrazy wrote:
barlio wrote:No I don't believe it is. If it was there would be a lot less hungry and dying people in the world (at least according to the UN's UDoHR).

@reds8n: Is your comment about the wealthy being applied to garrett's comment, or in more general terms?

You have a right to life. Is it negated if someone kills you?

I should have been more clear in my response. Should people have access to life-saving procedures? Yes. Should people be allowed to have cradle-to-grave health insurance? No. I view healthcare through my personal viewers. As I have had minimal health insurance throughout my life I understand the pain that the uninsured can go through. But I also understand that a percentage of people need more healthcare than the mean population. The obese, smokers, alcoholics, etc... these people are living in a way that both shortens their life expectancy and causes increased medical expenses. I'm not debating whether those individuals deserve life or death (all deserve life). If people are not attempting to live a semi-healthy lifestyle then who says that I must pay for their excessive living.

I'm also not debating that children shouldn't have access to healthcare. They should and to say otherwise is ridiculous (how can they care for themselves), but at some point adults have to take their mouths from the collective tit that is healthcare. You need to either foot the bill for your own expenses, or gain access to some sort of insurance company.

Again this isn't coming from some silver-spooned Trust fund guy. I've known what it's like to have and have-not, I just feel that at some point we are on our own (as in most things in life).

/rant over. Sorry Kilkrazy if that was TMI.

**Kilkrazy**

Don't understand TMI but I didn't take any offence.

Let's look at the question a different way. Do people disagree with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights entirely or just some of its clauses?

**whitedragon**

Kilkrazy wrote:Don't understand TMI but I didn't take any offence.

Let's look at the question a different way. Do people disagree with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights entirely or just some of its clauses?

That's more the type of discussion I wanted to have!

**barlio**

TMI-Too much information. If you know what TMI is, then excuse me. I probably stated that because I was acting defensive (sorry I've been taking things a little too personal lately).

Back on Topic: I just disagree with some of the clauses. Maybe not even the clauses themselves, but the wording.

**Frazzled**

Belphegor wrote:

*not yours Frazzled, I wouldn't dream of having your vote until we sign a nine-hundred & ninety-nine page binding agreement that had a sunset set minimum of of one-hundred years and a day.
As a professional courtesy, of course

Thats classic.

**Typeline**

Let's attack this from a different angle shall we?

Is healthcare a basic human right?

Rights do not exist.

Debate over!

New question!

Should health care be available to everyone despite race, creed and societal standing?

Why yes! Yes it should!

**dogma**

Cairnius wrote:
You're misusing the phrase. The concept of "inalienable rights" is the concept that humankind's rights to freedom and liberty are something we are born with, not something we are granted by any government, to wit life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You are born with the inalienable rights to live, to be free, and to use your life and your freedom to pursue a course that will make you happy.

There is no singular definition of 'inalienable rights', or 'natural rights'. To claim otherwise is massively ignorant.

Because I'm too lazy to carry the argument myself:

wikipedia wrote:
The concept of inalienable rights was criticized by Jeremy Bentham and Edmund Burke as groundless. Bentham and Burke, writing in the eighteenth century, claimed that rights arise from the actions of government, or evolve from tradition, and that neither of these can provide anything inalienable. (See Bentham's "Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights", and Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France"). Keeping with shift in thinking in the 19th century, Bentham famously dismissed the idea of natural rights as "nonsense on stilts".

The signers of the Declaration of Independence deemed it a "self evident truth" that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". Critics[who?], however, could argue that use of the word "Creator" signifies that these rights are based on theological principles, and might question which theological principles those are, or why those theological principles should be accepted by people who do not adhere to the religion from which they are derived[citation needed]. In "The Social Contract," Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims that the existence of inalienable rights is unnecessary for the existence of a constitution or a set of laws and rights. This idea of a social contract – that rights and responsibilities are derived from a consensual contract between the government and the people – is the most widely recognized alternative.

Samuel P. Huntington, an American political scientist, wrote that the "inalienable rights" argument from the Declaration of Independence was necessary because "The British were white, Anglo, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence".[citation needed]

Different philosophers have created different lists of rights they consider to be natural. Proponents of natural rights, in particular Hesselberg and Rothbard, have responded that reason can be applied to separate truly axiomatic rights from supposed rights, stating that any principle that requires itself to be disproved is an axiom. Critics have pointed to the lack of agreement between the proponents as evidence for the claim that the idea of natural rights is merely a political tool. For instance, Jonathan Wallace has asserted that there is no basis on which to claim that some rights are natural, and he argued that Hobbes' account of natural rights confuses right with ability (human beings have the ability to seek only their own good and follow their nature in the same way as animals, but this does not imply that they have a right to do so).[23] Wallace advocates a social contract, much like Hobbes and Locke, but does not base it on natural rights:

We are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don't tell me it offends the universe.

Other critics[who?] have argued that the attempt to derive rights from "natural law" or "human nature" is an example of the is-ought problem. However, the term "natural" in "natural rights" refers to the opposite of "artificial", rather than meaning "physical" as it does in the sense of ethical naturalism, which according to G.E. Moore does suffer the is-ought problem in the form of the naturalistic fallacy.

I'll also note that the definition of inalienable rights offered in the Declaration of Independence is impotent as individuality ensures that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" can never be forfeit without conflict, which necessarily fulfills all of those criteria.

**Kilkrazy**

Typeline wrote:Let's attack this from a different angle shall we?

Is healthcare a basic human right?

Rights do not exist.

Debate over!

New question!

Should healthcare be available to everyone despite race, creed and societal standing?

Why yes! Yes it should!

Do you disbelieve in all human rights?

**MeanGreenStompa**

In an ideal world all people would and should experience the best healthcare that science can facilitate.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

And yet an ideal world would be a Communist one, as having achieved global and infallible Abundance, no man would want for anything, on account of having everything.

But not Communist as a form of Government. Just Communist as a concept.

**warpcrafter**

The main reason why we don't have universal free health care is because the economy is in the hands of selfish corporate elites and corrupt politicians. We're just slaves to them, even though we get paid a pittance for our labor, they take it all away again. They use the media to scare us into obedience and distract us from the real issues and we have become so child-like that they can manipulate us at will. We're fethed and there's nothing we can do about it. We grow up being taught that any sort of disobedience is equal to a political crime and so we stand by while gak like the Iraq war and the latest recession happen. Why would anyone want to live a long life in such a world?

**Belphegor**

warpcrafter: Why would anyone want to live a long life in such a world?

um... bacon
duh

**Typeline**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Typeline wrote:Let's attack this from a different angle shall we?

Is healthcare a basic human right?

Rights do not exist.

Debate over!

New question!

Should healthcare be available to everyone despite race, creed and societal standing?

Why yes! Yes it should!

Do you disbelieve in all human rights?

Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of all humans being treated equally and with fair justice. But it just doesn't happen. No one really has any kind of basic human right. Any government can come over you as an individual and deny you anything and everything you wanted. You can just vanish, and none will be the wiser. All governments can and do, do this. So the idea of ones rights exist, but the rights themselves do not.

**Kilkrazy**

Typeline wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Typeline wrote:Let's attack this from a different angle shall we?

Is healthcare a basic human right?

Rights do not exist.

Debate over!

New question!

Should healthcare be available to everyone despite race, creed and societal standing?

Why yes! Yes it should!

Do you disbelieve in all human rights?

Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of all humans being treated equally and with fair justice. But it just doesn't happen. No one really has any kind of basic human right. Any government can come over you as an individual and deny you anything and everything you wanted. You can just vanish, and none will be the wiser. All governments can and do, do this. So the idea of ones rights exist, but the rights themselves do not.

The whole point of the rule of law, and clauses like 'due process' (US constitution and similar clauses in UDHR) is that in a country like the USA or UK the government can't just do anything it likes.

Do you believe these governments just do whatever they like?

**Frazzled**

Now there's a loaded question.

**Typeline**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Typeline wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Typeline wrote:Let's attack this from a different angle shall we?

Is healthcare a basic human right?

Rights do not exist.

Debate over!

New question!

Should healthcare be available to everyone despite race, creed and societal standing?

Why yes! Yes it should!

Do you disbelieve in all human rights?

Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of all humans being treated equally and with fair justice. But it just doesn't happen. No one really has any kind of basic human right. Any government can come over you as an individual and deny you anything and everything you wanted. You can just vanish, and none will be the wiser. All governments can and do, do this. So the idea of ones rights exist, but the rights themselves do not.

The whole point of the rule of law, and clauses like 'due process' (US constitution and similar clauses in UDHR) is that in a country like the USA or UK the government can't just do anything it likes.

Do you believe these governments just do whatever they like?

I don't believe it, I know it.

I'm not bemoaning my nationality and singing the praises of nations with little to no control over their populace. I'm just telling it like it is. America and the United Kingdom are still some of the most incredible places to live in the world. But there is a major problem with America, we have people from the financial department in our hospitals come into patients rooms and ask them for money. When they don't have any, we put them on the street. Then they die.

**warpcrafter**

Belphegor wrote:
warpcrafter: Why would anyone want to live a long life in such a world?
um... bacon
duh

Thank you.

**Orkeosaurus**

Healthcare cannot be an unalienable right. To do so would require the rights against forced servitude to be abolished, as healthcare is a service provided by others.

What people have a right to is some form of work that allows them to maintain a descent standard of living through use of their natural resources. In this case, that would probably result in basic to good healthcare, in addition to food, uncontaminated water, shelter from the elements and so forth. However, if no one felt like selling you healthcare you'd still be on your own.

**Arctik_Firangi**

Healthcare is not a basic human right, but overcharging for basic healthcare is certainly immoral.

Responsible government isn't a basic human right either, but it should heavily subsidise general healthcare wherever it does exist.

Someone do that reach-through-the-monitor thing and palm garret's face into oblivion already.

**Typeline**

Orkeosaurus wrote:Healthcare cannot be an unalienable right. To do so would require the rights against forced servitude to be abolished, as healthcare is a service provided by others.

That's not really a very good argument.

Our police aren't slaves, nor our judges, nor our soldiers, nor our teachers, nor our firefighters etc etc etc

**MeanGreenStompa**

garret wrote:No its not.
If you want treatment then pay the money.
if you cant to bad. hospitals are a business above all else.

Hospitals are places of healing above all else, they are only businesses in certain countries. The 'if you can't, too bad' (tidied that bit of grammar for you

) statement seems somewhat lacking in measured thought, what about those who survived the hurricane but were left homeless and without the funds to pay for the medical treatment they required? Your answers in this post seem very flippant and lacking in compassion. Your turn of phrase does come across as arrogant, ill thought out and the product of someone lacking in life skills brought about by experience or the wisdom of years.

**garret**

Y'know im getting pretty tired of people saying that because im 16 i cant have an intelligent conversation with them.

**Typeline**

garret wrote:Y'know im getting pretty tired of people saying that because im 16 i cant have an intelligent conversation with them.

No one said that, but thanks for pointing it out for us.

**Orkeosaurus**

Typeline wrote:That's not really a very good argument.

Our police aren't slaves, nor our judges, nor our soldiers, nor our teachers, nor our firefighters etc etc etc

That's why the services provided by those jobs cannot be unalienable rights either, with the partial exception of those of the police, judges, and soldiers.

While having police protecting you from murder isn't an unalienable, being protected from murder is. One of the main reasons for the existence of the government is to preserve your rights from the infringements of others. Police wouldn't be necessary, of course, in a society where people didn't infringe on the rights of others.

The occupations you referred to are paid with taxes; if no one wanted to be a fireman, no matter the pay, you would be out of luck if your house was burning. Thus, it's not an unalienable right to have fires put out (although protection from arson is). Taxes are another issue, but they're at least partially justified by being a way for the use of the country's resources to be better distributed. The government has no power to coercively force people into working so that they can collect more tax revenue, although if don't work you may be unable to support yourself (which is a law of nature, not of anyone else).

**garret**

Typeline wrote:
garret wrote:Y'know im getting pretty tired of people saying that because im 16 i cant have an intelligent conversation with them.

No one said that, but thanks for pointing it out for us.

pointing what out.
My age or the statement.

**Wrexasaur**

Kilkrazy wrote:Then how do you explain the behaviour of parents, lifeboatmen and mountain rescue workers?

I always thought they were like angels or something, every damn fuzzy-hearted one of them

.

They are still selfish in some way man, and if they are not you better believe people are fully aware of being in the presence of a truly benevolent person.

I could even argue that some of these benevolent people are no better than anyone else, but my arguments would be flawed, and I would have to conclude they are the closest thing we have to angels on the planet. Better appreciate them before they just disappear altogether.

**Typeline**

Orkeosaurus wrote:
Typeline wrote:That's not really a very good argument.

Our police aren't slaves, nor our judges, nor our soldiers, nor our teachers, nor our firefighters etc etc etc
That's why the services provided by those jobs cannot be unalienable rights either, with the partial exception of those of the police, judges, and soldiers.

While having police protecting you from murder isn't an unalienable, being protected from murder is. One of the main reasons for the existence of the government is to preserve your rights from the infringements of others. Police wouldn't be necessary, of course, in a society where people didn't infringe on the rights of others.

The occupations you referred to are paid with taxes; if no one wanted to be a fireman, no matter the pay, you would be out of luck if your house was burning. Thus, it's not an unalienable right to have fires put out (although protection from arson is). Taxes are another issue, but they're at least partially justified by being a way for the use of the country's resources to be better distributed. The government has no power to coercively force people into working so that they can collect more tax revenue, although if don't work you may be unable to support yourself (which is a law of nature, not of anyone else).

Maybe one day we will eliminate all those pesky services that aren't protecting our inalienable rights. So we'll just have Murder Stoppers, Arson Preventers, Happiness Makers and umm... Life... Givers...

**Orkeosaurus**

I'm just saying that receiving healthcare from others isn't a fundamental right. Same goes for having others build roads for you, or others educating you.

I'm not saying it's a service that shouldn't be provided.

**Cheese Elemental**

Cairnius wrote:
At this point all the Christians and Buddhists in the room should just post "Yes" without further ado and leave the conversation to everyone else whose creed doesn't explicitly say.

Ok then.

Yes. Een Befaw Lawk.