(no subject)

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Comments

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

Health care isn't a human right? Fascinating.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How is it a human right?

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

Because dying because you can't afford health care is fascist at best? In what world is not dying not a human right?

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

We all get to die. Check it out.

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

Riiiiiiiight. So therefore dying of leukemia because you can't afford treatment is just the way it is.

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

Good enough for grandad.

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

Sure. Happens every day.

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

Sure. Happens every day.

Abuses of human rights happen every day, it's true.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I can't tell. You know that's an absolutely terrible, terrible argument. Violence, murder, sexual assault, betrayal, all these things happen every day. That doesn't change them from being bad, undesirable things.

We all get to die, it's true, but it's very foolish for a society to invest money in children and their education, but not spend money on those childrens adult health. Why invest in em if you don't care if they die? Keep that return-on-investment high!

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Because dying because you can't afford health care is fascist at best?

Odd definition of fascism.

In what world is not dying not a human right?

"Not dying" is not the same as "health care." I have the right to pursue ways to not die, not to have them given to me by others.

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

I have the right to pursue ways to not die, not to have them given to me by others.

Because you don't define health care as a human right? All you did there was re-state your stance on the issue, not make a case for why one should be charged money to not die.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Because you don't define health care as a human right?

No, because there's a subtle difference between the two concepts.

not make a case for why one should be charged money to not die.

Health care is a finite, scarce product/service. To get the most people the most care, paying for it simply makes the most sense.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Health care is a finite, scarce product/service. To get the most people the most care, paying for it simply makes the most sense.

This is incredibly lazy. Because, of course, virtually everything is a "finite, scarce product [or] service." Nothing follows from this trivial observation. Instead, we have to make a normative decision about whether some "products [or] services" are so vital, or so productive of common welfare, or so morally required, that we should take extraordinary steps to make them as broadly accessible as possible.

Land, asphalt, and labor are all "finite, scarce products [or] services," for instance, but we still build and maintain roads without charging people to use almost any of them. The same goes for education and safety in various forms - from fire, from criminal or warlike activity, from poisonous food or drugs. People don't pay directly for the flood management systems that keep them dry in a deluge or the regulatory activity that keeps their air breathable. Yet these all require the utilization or investment of "finite, scarce products [or] services."

So your argument, boiled down, is just that we're at a point in our history, as a nation, when we're coming to understand that the way we've been providing for our own healthcare isn't achieving the goals we want to achieve - just as we've previously come to understand that the way we were(n't) regulating air pollution was making us miserable, just as we've previously come to understand that the way we were(n't) providing for economic security in our old age wasn't (somehow) inspiring enough private charity to fill in the gaps, just as we've previously come to understand that the way we were(n't) providing for our education wasn't producing generations of responsible, voting citizens - and that you'd rather change the subject. Actually, your response seems to be, this is the best that can be achieved, even though the very medium you're using to convey this message exists only because another generation of people didn't accept your facile inference as self-evident.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

No, it only makes the most sense if you are someone with money and haven't suffered because of the pay-for-health-care system we have.

Universal care is possible, denying so is absurd.

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

I can believe universal health care would be a good idea without it becoming a human right. Calling it a right is an abuse of the term, and weakens the argument.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I don't subscribe to the idea of natural rights in the first place, so I have to agree. Its well documented the blood and toil that rights have been forged from, to assume they just naturally occur is kind of insulting.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Are you one of those "rights come from God" types?

Cause otherwise, where the hell do rights come from, if not being the best idea around on how to live morally and fairly with others?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I have the right to pursue ways to not die,...

Do you? How is this a "human right"?

It's important not to take received notions like this for granted or to assume that the philosophical basis for them has been sufficiently established by an Enlightenment-era philosopher writing before modern medicine was even conceivable, to say nothing of modern healthcare.

The important thing to notice about "human rights" in this discussion is that they cannot be distinguished from other claim-rights that are not "human rights" based on whether they inhere in the individual him or herself, considered abstractly in isolation from any social context. When you say, for instance, "I have a right to pursue ways to not die," you're not speaking of some special case of a broader "right" to act as you please, but of something that is only conceivable in a context where "pursuing ways to not die" actually means something other than "eating" and "avoiding dangerous situations." That is, a context where there are things like "medicine" and "healthcare" and "doctors" and "hospitals."

To say that you "have the right to pursue ways to not die" is already to accept that this "right" bears some relation to those around you, and from this we might well derive duties owed to you by those others. For instance - your "right to pursue ways to not die" may well imply that people who are purporting to help you do just that - pharmacists, doctors, drug companies, etc. - have some kind of special duty to you not to do things like intentionally misdiagnose you, act negligently, sell you inert prescriptions, etc., which otherwise would not be owed to you when you are doing something less essential to your existence. Your doctor, in other words, probably has an ethical duty to you that someone like your plumber does not.

Actually, this is apparent already from the customary nomenclature - "human rights." What you don't seem to appreciate is that you're twisting this notion of a "right" into something that is really a "freedom." Rights are, essentially, entitlements, so there is no incongruity in asserting that a "human right" might well entail duties owed to you by others. That is what "rights" are. What you're talking about, when you're talking about others not owing you anything, and instead about your "right" to do as you please and, more particularly, to "pursue ways to not die," is a "freedom." Which is fine! Perhaps you ought to be free to do just that. But it's not a "human right" you're talking about.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

Isn't it anyone's and everyone's duty to perform a binding contract to the letter?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

No. What's the relevance of the question?

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

How is speech a human right?

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Oh snap!

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Ask North Koreans if it is.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

There is an old soviet joke about freedom of speech in socialist countries. It exists in many varieties, but the punchline is essentially the same - whilst freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Soviet constitution no-one has guaranteed the subsequent freedom of those who speak.