It’s time to guarantee healthcare to all Americans as a human right(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
It’s time to guarantee healthcare to all Americans as a human right
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/18/healthcare-us-human-right-medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders
16 comments
What you're thinking of already has a name, it's called a "positive right".
Negative rights are things you're entitled to do.
Positive rights are what you're entitled to.
Negative rights are things you're entitled to do.
Positive rights are what you're entitled to.
>We need a new word for this sort of thing […] lest entire generations of people think that the millions and billions of dollars required to process and clean water, and grow produce and make access to food possible, and have other human being labor for our benefit as being “entitled rights” simply be being a human being.
I’m curious about this. My response to this statement is “So what?”
Aside from the implicit assumption that “entire generations of people” would never bother to learn how society functions if the word “right” were used in a more relaxed sense when it comes to healthcare, what harm comes to society if citizens are comfortable considering healthcare to be a right?
I use the phrase “what harm comes” in the present tense because many people that live in countries with socialized medicine happily call healthcare a right. What harm are they undergoing presently?
I’m curious about this. My response to this statement is “So what?”
Aside from the implicit assumption that “entire generations of people” would never bother to learn how society functions if the word “right” were used in a more relaxed sense when it comes to healthcare, what harm comes to society if citizens are comfortable considering healthcare to be a right?
I use the phrase “what harm comes” in the present tense because many people that live in countries with socialized medicine happily call healthcare a right. What harm are they undergoing presently?
>We need a new word for this sort of thing. These things are absolutely not human rights in the “inalienable” or “fundamental” sense of being entitled to them just by a being human.
These things are absolutely considered human rights everywhere in the modern world... except the United States.
Only in the US would a new word be needed, because Americans can't wrap their heads around the premise of human life having value beyond its transactional value under capitalism, or of governments having any kind of social obligation to provide for the welfare of their citizens.
Saying we as a society need to create bills, taxes and infrastructure to guarantee these things is equivalent to considering them rights. That's what rights are - things governments have to allow and provide for. Just like the right to keep and bear arms requires accepting gun violence, more work for EMTs and law enforcement, legal infrastructure and any number of negative societal costs. But Americans are willing to tolerate mass shootings becoming so commonplace you can't even remember the latest one because shooting people is as fundamental to Americans as the law of gravity, it's a right granted by God, it just is.
Yet feeding people? Housing people? Access to medical care? Education? Women can't even get an abortion in the case of rape, incest or fetal death in nearly a dozen states, because even bodily autonomy and privacy are up for grabs now. Suggest that Americans deserve any of these things and a lot of them get nervous and reach for their revolvers. But Americans should want these things. The richest country in the world should want to be willing to pay the cost of a society worth living in. We should want our government to be effective at something more than violence. The country that built Hoover Dam and created the Manhattan Project and put a man on the moon should be eager to put resources towards improving the quality of life all of its citizens.
But we aren't willing, and the implication that we need new language to even discuss it is depressing as hell.
These things are absolutely considered human rights everywhere in the modern world... except the United States.
Only in the US would a new word be needed, because Americans can't wrap their heads around the premise of human life having value beyond its transactional value under capitalism, or of governments having any kind of social obligation to provide for the welfare of their citizens.
Saying we as a society need to create bills, taxes and infrastructure to guarantee these things is equivalent to considering them rights. That's what rights are - things governments have to allow and provide for. Just like the right to keep and bear arms requires accepting gun violence, more work for EMTs and law enforcement, legal infrastructure and any number of negative societal costs. But Americans are willing to tolerate mass shootings becoming so commonplace you can't even remember the latest one because shooting people is as fundamental to Americans as the law of gravity, it's a right granted by God, it just is.
Yet feeding people? Housing people? Access to medical care? Education? Women can't even get an abortion in the case of rape, incest or fetal death in nearly a dozen states, because even bodily autonomy and privacy are up for grabs now. Suggest that Americans deserve any of these things and a lot of them get nervous and reach for their revolvers. But Americans should want these things. The richest country in the world should want to be willing to pay the cost of a society worth living in. We should want our government to be effective at something more than violence. The country that built Hoover Dam and created the Manhattan Project and put a man on the moon should be eager to put resources towards improving the quality of life all of its citizens.
But we aren't willing, and the implication that we need new language to even discuss it is depressing as hell.
You can't have an ideology that claims both "people have a right to things that others must produce" and "bodily autonomy". This isn't a potluck dinner. You can't just mix and match contradictory beliefs because it pleases you.
My conflict with thinking like yours is that it conflates and confuses moral dignities with production obligations.
I moved to Canada from the US for 5 years. TBF it was in a big city, but I had the novel experience of having a physician "follow" me. if I missed an blood test, they called. if they saw something suspicious, they made a decision on whether to dig deeper based on my age. I returned to the US and the contrast was stark. if you showed, you showed, if not, "oh well".
Now I’m imagining Canadian doctors following you into dark alleys for some “emergency medical care”.
It is never going to happen in the US. The US stopped being a democracy a long time ago:
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
You linked an op ed claiming the U.S. is an oligarchy instead of a democracy because, statistically, things poor people want lose at the ballot box.
It then says Russia is an oligarchy and that there's "no real difference" between it and the U.S. That's an insane claim.
What you or the op ed would need to do is to demonstrate evidence of specific things people want that aren't being done and why they're not being done, with the reason why tied to some oligarchic repression of the masses.
I don't know of a single thing that comes close to that in the U.S. The fact is that the country is bitterly divided, and the evidence of that division (and a sign that it is indeed a democracy -- otherwise, the ruling oligarchy would just do want it wants despite the divisions) is gridlock. Healthcare is complicated, and no one wants their taxes to go up. Even still, the Affordable Care Act passed (and then people tried to repeal it over and over and are probably still trying to). The rich have influence everywhere, even in China, but that's the last thing steering U.S. policy. You have elites like Zuckerberg dragged out before Congress and people like Shkreli imprisoned.
It then says Russia is an oligarchy and that there's "no real difference" between it and the U.S. That's an insane claim.
What you or the op ed would need to do is to demonstrate evidence of specific things people want that aren't being done and why they're not being done, with the reason why tied to some oligarchic repression of the masses.
I don't know of a single thing that comes close to that in the U.S. The fact is that the country is bitterly divided, and the evidence of that division (and a sign that it is indeed a democracy -- otherwise, the ruling oligarchy would just do want it wants despite the divisions) is gridlock. Healthcare is complicated, and no one wants their taxes to go up. Even still, the Affordable Care Act passed (and then people tried to repeal it over and over and are probably still trying to). The rich have influence everywhere, even in China, but that's the last thing steering U.S. policy. You have elites like Zuckerberg dragged out before Congress and people like Shkreli imprisoned.
I recommend reading the actual study:
“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
Won’t work. Basic healthcare, sure but there are end of life Hail Mary procedures that are super expensive (and not that effective) where do we draw the line?
Only if the US truly wants to become a first-world country...
It should be sufficient just to say that as a society we agree that we need to create bills, taxation appropriations, and infrastructure to guarantee societal privileges to its people.
This sort of language is important lest entire generations of people think that the millions and billions of dollars required to process and clean water, and grow produce and make access to food possible, and have other human being labor for our benefit as being “entitled rights” simply be being a human being.
Should we have these things? Absolutely. But someone had to pay for them, us collectively, and others have to perform the actual labor. At which point there becomes a government funded market for these things unless they’re state owned, which still leaves laborers subject to market compensation.