Yes. And conversely, if you provide MY healthcare (by your taxes) I'm very much concerned about YOUR ability to work and pay taxes, which is effectively the same thing.
This is exactly why we have seatbelt laws. Your seatbelt just makes you less of a dead person so you can pay for your healthcare (and mine). And when/if you have an accident it makes you a person with two broken wrists that costs my taxes less than if you were a person with critical injuries - so I'd rather pay for your damages if you wear a seatbelt.
See this is also an important point: a high-tax society also requires a sense that tax money is well spent. This means that it can't feel like the money is spent "on someone else", you can't have a feeling among the population that tax money is often wasted, or that it's spent on wars (for example). If money was spent on healthcare for people who didn't want to use seatbelts - I'd be less willing to pay taxes. So my high taxes require these kinds of laws. Still, people are free to eat pizza and beer 24/7 and I still pay for their healthcare - because the alternative would be a too big government involvement in peoples lives. All they can do is tax beer higher, not much more.
Now, of course all of these limitations of your freedoms has to be weighed against the value they provide. The cost of people driving around without seatbelts is huge to socitey. The cost for an individual to wear as seatbelt is tiny. So it's a no brainer even in the most liberal societies.
You mean you won't be able to refuse paying for it (that might be the case) or not able to refuse actually receiving the care (no one will force you)
The only exception is vaccination possibly, which should be legally required.
I saw the link but didn't see the connection between "public universal healthcare" and "forced healthcare practiced on people". Can you elaborate on that connection?
publicly funded universal healthcare is about how healthcare is funded. How it's performed is a separate matter.
Or, to give an example of this actually taking place, look at the education. It's funded by the government and also is mandatory and enforced by the government. It does not necessary have to follow, in other countries with free public education you won't get arrested for not sending your kids to school. But it could turn the way it's turned in the US just as well.
These are two freedoms at play : the childs right to go to school vs. a parents right of refusing it. I'm of the opinion that the childs right is the stronger right here. Arresting parents might be a bit over the top (the childs right to have their parents at their side might be at risk instead which is worse) - but hefty fines or similar could be appropriate.
If there had not been publically funded schools it would be much harder or impossible to make compulsory attendance laws. As there is no public healthcare now it's very hard or impossible to make compulsory medical procedures laws. If health care becomes public - the sky is the limit.
Sorry I can't see that connection now. Publicly funded schools and publicly operated schools are two entirely different things.
> As there is no public healthcare now it's very hard or impossible to make compulsory medical procedures laws. If health care becomes public - the sky is the limit.
Again. a) The funds and the operation are two different thoigs and b) if you start doing medical procedures on people against their will, you are in some kind of dystopian society.
There is no slippery slope here.
The compulsory attendance laws do not depend on who operates the school. There are private schools enjoying the same laws.
>Again. a) The funds and the operation are two different thoigs and b) if you start doing medical procedures on people against their will, you are in some kind of dystopian society.
This is not an argument. You could just as well say "If you start sending children to school against their will and will of their parents you are in some kind of dystopian society". All the arguments I've seen here are of the nature "Free healthcare yay! Only idiots think it will come with strings attached from the government. Healthcare is good ergo it cannot turn bad, BTFO!" It's running in circles and if you cannot even consider all the consequences of government policies - good luck in the future, I am out of this thread.
"The police enforcing doctor's orders." Give me a break. I'm all for healthy debate but come on. This is the most inane argument I've ever heard about universal health care, and I've heard quite a few.
Sorry for not being more constructive, I just can't see this line of reasoning go anywhere useful.
I don't think people think of that as healthcare but as a sentence for doing something criminal. Just like we lock insane murderers up and force them to undergo psychologicalt treatment (instead of sending them to prison which is often legally dubious if someone is clinically insane) that kind of rehab is basically treatment forced on someone for committing a crime, not some part of a public/universal healthcare program. Separate topic.
This argument against government-funded healthcare focuses on anecdata at best. And not very reliable.
Yes and dissenters were sent to labor camps involuntarily... I don't know why we are talking about a communist dictatorship here when we are discussing what would/can take place in a liberal democracy. The difference between a liberal democracy and a state that isn't, is that all measures that limit personal freedoms (such as mandatory basic education or whatever it might be) is subject to a democratic process.
> I'd like you to consider that people of the US had banned alcohol in the Constitution at one point, not so far in the past.
I don't consider it impossible that alcohol would be considered illegal in 50 or 100 years in the US. But I do find it very unlikely that some kind of forced treatment would be imposed on someone for an addiction that is not illegal in, in any country that is supposedly a liberal democracy. In fact - I'd probably hesitate to even consider that state a liberal democracy then, and the whole issue disappears (because as I explained above - we are only talking about liberal democracies here, and a US where people are sent to forced rehab without doing something illegal would not be a liberal democracy anymore)
So to be very clear: please don't go to the slipperly slope argument to suggest that public and universal healthcare in a democracy somehow ends up in involuntary treatment of law abiding citizens (Again vaccination possibly excepted).
Actually, to mental health institution from 1960s.
So the US manages to have mandatory rehab without public healthcare. The two are really not related.
If so, let's try it on some other topic. E.g. "Government is already wiretapping and spying on citizens communications so providing public Internet is completely safe and in no way government is going to be spying on it!". Does it work for you?