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Comment by woofyman | Hacker News Reader

>Not that we should be providing government healthcare anyway.

I believe that healthcare is a basic human right.

Human rights are things that are inherent to being human. Freedom, liberty, etc (to the extent that you are not denying the same to another person).

Health care requires someone else to do something to provide it. Therefore it isn't a basic human right.

Freedom requires other people to enforce laws that protect those freedoms.

You mean if I don't have the freedom to decide I don't like freedom, your goons will punch some freedom into me? Sound very un-free to me.

Reminds me I still have my unread copy of Nozick gathering dust.

Human rights are things that are inherent to being human.

That is your definition. If you look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1], the definition they employ is much broader. E.g.

  Article 25.
  (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate  for the health
  and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing,
  housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to
  security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability,  widowhood,
  old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
  (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.
  All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social
  protection.

[1] http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Will this negatively affect immigration policy? Has it already?

Well, we can always eat the immigrants!

/s? It's a service. A product. It didn't even exist 200 years ago. There is certainly nothing fundamental about it.

Because I think it's really important people stop thinking healthcare is a fundamental human right: Somebody has to provide healthcare for you. There is limited supply. There is INFINITE demand. That's right, infinite demand. People demand exponentially more healthcare as they get closer to death, and the majority of a person's lifelong costs are incurred in the final year of their life. The entire healthcare sector couldn't keep one person alive forever, and there is a diminishing return on each dollar that is spent on keeping a dying person alive for another hour (measured in hours/$).

Slavery also existed 200 years ago, and yet "not being a slave" is a basic human right.

Equally good healthcare for everyone, independent of their wealth, is a worthwhile goal for society, and all but one of the so-called developed countries have pretty much achieved it.

Your first point is illogical. It was a violation of basic human rights then and it still is now. The underlying tenet (liberty) is independent of "not being a slave" and has nothing to do with whether slavery has been invented yet/is being practiced. Make sense?

That's a nice fantasy, but it's also a fantasy. If you think Canada has equal healthcare for all, then please explain why various prime ministers and EU dignitaries come to the US for major operations.

On a tangent, I do think the US has an arguably worse healthcare system than some of these socialist countries, but not because the socialist system is good -- it's because we have such a distorted market. We have Medicare/Medicaid which basically social healthcare, almost any prescription for $5, but it's even worse than social healthcare because it only applies to some of the population, driving prices up for those who don't yet qualify. We have overbearing occupational licensing. It is TOO hard to become a doctor. We have overbearing malpractice regulation -- a huge percentage of a doctor's salary goes to malpractice insurance, making regulators/lawyers richer. We have a stifling FDA, which combined with our over-powered IP system grants monopolies to drug companies and enables price gouging.

We have nothing resembling a free healthcare market, my friend, so don't blame capitalism for America's problems.

I don't know about Canada. But for various reasons I believe that healthcare cannot be a free non-distorted market. You cannot choose too often when or where or by whom you'll be operated; some people (the elder or those who have genetic issues or those that have a relatively dangerous self-employed job, for example) need healthcare more than others; patients obviously die during surgery putting doctors at a higher risk of malpractice litigations; and so on. My point is that the only way to mitigate all of this is to build an economy of scale, and single-payer/mandatory insurance is exactly that.

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