Hospitals in the US are obligated to treat any emergency patient regardless of whether they can pay.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/15/new_york_hospitals_sad...
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/1/7/state_secret_why_are_un...
[somehow Democracy Now seems appropriate for a Stallman discussion]
And even if you do have insurance or the ability to pay, or (AFAIK) if a hospital waives payment for someone indigent, there's still a metric ton of paperwork to be filled out, which makes doing my taxes seem simple and fun by comparison. Don't even get me started on the catastrophically bad state of medical record-keeping.
I should also add that even if you don't have money, you still have access. I was seen at a clinic at Mass General (http://www.massgeneral.org) recently by making an optional $2 donation.
But the "lot of money" thing is just reality: health care costs a lot of money, period. And it must be paid. Coming up with a regime to do so without leaving people out or inappropriately burdening them is a hard problem, and frankly no entity, government or private, can claim to have solved it "well".
Medical care is a "right" in the sense that it's something you shouldn't have to ask for permission to seek, but we aren't entitled to it. It's a service that can be provided and bought on the free market like all other services.
If granting one person a "right" means violating someone else's rights (that is, their right to choose how to direct their energy and the fruits of their labor) then it's unjust.
In any case, rights can and are sometimes eclipsed by others. The idea of natural, absolute rights is just ridiculous.
Is it your position that everything can be justified by a persons ability to get up and move?
Maybe in a hypothetical world where you can find this hypothetical free market. In the real world, health care can be treated as a fundamental right because there are enough doctors available.
When something is reasonably considered optional, ideally and hopefully you aren't forced to pay for other people's partaking of that optional service.
Healthcare is not one of those things. It's optional in the sense that everyone has the option of refusing medical care, even if sometimes that means dying, but it's not optional in that almost every sane person with more than a minor cut or sniffles or food poisoning opts for medical care if it is available rather than the alternative.
Other mandatory goods and services, like food, clothing, housing, city utilities (water/electricity), even internet access, work better in a mostly private model for a couple major reasons. First, the price variance for the necessary part of those goods and services is very low compared to variance for the medical costs someone might incur. Second, a lot of people can afford and want more than the bare necessities. Not so with medical care, where few people can afford major surgery or routine treatments for some major chronic conditions.
Another aspect of medical care is that we benefit even if we're never treated. Do you know anyone who has ever needed significant medical care at a hospital? I doubt your relationship with those people means nothing to you.
Why not think of it as insurance instead (social security)? Less desperate people means less muggers on the street. Less sick people means less risk to get infected yourself. Plus, should you ever happen to fall on hard times yourself (god forbid), you would be provided for.
I believe in selfishness as the best basis for a society, and I still think it is in favor of social security and public health care.
Discussing fundamental rights is bound to be bullshit. The only right that exists is the right of the stronger party (established by guns, majority votes etc). If the stronger party believes x is a right, it is a right. So if a majority of voters in a democracy is convinced x is a right (perhaps because the better smooth talker convinced them), it can become a right. That is all there is to it. Philosophy is irrelevant.
Most of the population prefer to use the free, government subsidized health system though.
In the US it is a complete mess. Half of all healthcare spending is done by the government anyway (Medicare, Medicaid, government employees, army/veterans etc) and hence paid for by tax payers according to their income but not available to most taxpayers. The other half is paid for by charities, individuals, companies and by taxpayers (the government chooses not to collect tax on premiums paid by companies). Add in "insurance" companies which act as middle men between the payments and the healthcare delivery, plus a lot of regulation, and a large number of people whose jobs are to try and increase or decrease payments from the other groups and the whole thing is an unholy mess.
In the UK dentistry is not covered by the National Health Service. (More accurately it can be but the vast majority of dentists opt out.)
As for waiting lists the UK did significantly increase spending in order to reduce them. (The UK also had one of the lowest per capita spending rates in the EU.)
However every health system anywhere has to do some form of rationing. There aren't an infinite number of beds, doctors, machines, or money for that matter. When there is some waiting then whatever is being waited on can achieve 100% utilization although queues can easily get out of hand. How to do the rationing is very tricky. Ultimately some value has to be put on human life. Spending $5000 on a course of treatment instead of $100,000 where the latter has 5% better outcomes needs to be decided.
I don't know about the whole country, but in the cities I've lived in recently it's been no problem to get NHS dental care, at least for the basics. I guess I can't fault your words technically, but I think "In the UK dentistry is covered by the National Health Service" would be at least as accurate as your version.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2672411/Crippled-m...
Circumstances seem to be debatable, though.
As for consciously deciding to get drunk when sober, I normally decide to get tipsy. It is when I am tipsy that I decide to get absolutely hammered.
But then again according to statistics, drinkers live longer, have more sex and have higher IQs than teetotallers, plus for most of human history it was one of the few sources of clean water, so is not an entirely stupid activity.
Don't worry, your nervousness will be replaced by anger soon enough.
You can pick where you want to live based on what you like. A state in the US is almost as big as many countries, so you can think of the US as a conglomerate of many countries.
However Massachusetts is having some adverse selection going on as people who otherwise could not afford health care are going there and putting a drain on the system. They are also having a shortage of family doctors.
What is making the states very upset at the current federal plan is that they loose the opportunity to decide for themself how they want the state to run.
Same goes for Europe and its member states I guess.
To my mind, 20 minutes is hardly an unreasonable delay when you're not an emergency. To make a snide remark about it when you're a guest in the country and getting the advantages of their free health services is just poor taste and bad manners.
Frankly, there's a reason why I used the word 'appreciate' rather than 'respect' and that's because while RMS has done much good for the world, he's also an extremist and a fundamentalist who's publicly held convictions in some areas indirectly damage the cause he's fighting for.