Is healthcare a right or a responsibility?

[upant]

No where. But you said health care is a privilege. It’s a right according to the Church.

does the church define what healthcare means?

This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever read on this forum. You are telling us that there’s only X amount of medical supplies and we should live with it.

don’t let reality get in your way.

supplies are different from services

there is a limited number of doctors in the world. can everyone get healthcare anywhere at any time? a right isn’t defined on where you live or if you have access to the limited services.

a right isn’t something that you don’t have or can’t get.

a right isn’t only for wealthy countries.

the question is, is it a right or responsibility

because it isn’t a right doesn’t mean it is the humane thing to provide the care.

Bit of a sweeping generalization that.

a question, not an indictment, it still stands

if I don’t want to work, do you have to support me with food, water, and shelter?
is there a right to expect to be given anything.

 

[StudentMI]

does the church define what healthcare means?

I’m not even gonna bother replying any more to this. You’ve been told what the Church teaches. You’ve been given sources. I assume you are Catholic.

 

[upant]

upant:

if I don’t want to work, do you have to support me with food, water, and shelter?

is there a right to expect to be given anything.

This is a loaded question (and clearly meant to be), but the basic answer is that everyone is entitled to basic rights, such as food water, shelter and health care. Why do you think otherwise?

is a person able to achieve it on their own without any interference from someone else?

a right isn’t dependent on the services of others. I have a right to these things only as far as my own effort goes. a right isn’t dependent on the charity of others.

Taking care of others is a responsibility.

being taken care of is a privilege.

 

[StudentMI]

Just wanted to leave with this quote from the Compendium, #184.

The Church’s love for the poor is inspired by the Gospel of the Beatitudes, by the poverty of Jesus and by his attention to the poor. This love concerns material poverty and also the numerous forms of cultural and religious poverty* [389]. The Church, “since her origin and in spite of the failing of many of her members, has not ceased to work for their relief, defence and liberation through numerous works of charity which remain indispensable always and everywhere”[390]. Prompted by the Gospel injunction, “You have received without paying, give without pay” ( Mt 10:8), the Church teaches that one should assist one’s fellow man in his various needs and fills the human community with countless works of corporal and spiritual mercy . “Among all these, giving alms to the poor is one of the chief witnesses to fraternal charity: it is also a work of justice pleasing to God”[391], even if the practice of charity is not limited to alms-giving but implies addressing the social and political dimensions of the problem of poverty. In her teaching the Church constantly returns to this relationship between charity and justice: “When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours. More than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice”[392]. The Council Fathers strongly recommended that this duty be fulfilled correctly, remembering that “what is already due in justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity”[393]. Love for the poor is certainly “incompatible with immoderate love of riches or their selfish use” [394] (cf. Jas 5:1-6).

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...peace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html

It is a debt to be paid.

 

[godisgood77]

As I’ve said previously, lots of people seem to think affordable has to always mean “free.”

I didn’t say free nor did I mean free.

Just look to prescription drug prices… prices have gone arbitrarily at a rate better than 5 times inflation. Try managing that if you’re elderly and on a fixed income.

Price gouging is rampant…and pretty disgusting

I think good healthcare should be available even to those who can’t afford it…call me a Christian… I’ll take it

 

[VonDerTann]

My point really is that good health care is available, almost always to people who can’t afford it (particularly via charity care). It may not be perfect health care, but it’s usually very good.

You’re absolutely correct: You didn’t say “free.” The issue is, that’s what people seem to demand and/or feel they are entitled to, i.e., European-style free care, and I posit that causes all sorts of problems, including a decline in the quality of care. They particularly want it free when it’s defined as a “right.” If I have a “right” to care, very soon I become entitled to “whatever care I want, when I want it, for free.”

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

I meant “save a life” even if that life is not in imminent danger.

Codependency always does spiritual and emotional harm to its object. For that matter, it does such harm to everyone involved.

Throwing a label with drug abuse overtones does not mean the harm from enabling drug abuse carries over to harm enabling someone to pay for a chemotherapy.

Again, the right to be able to earn for oneself the necessities of life doesn’t in any way imply a right to have them provided to you.

Very few people today earn by their own efforts enough money to pay for any medical procedure they might need. We use insurance. But the private insurance system is tied to employment so that it is not completely under the control of each person. So it is inaccurate to portray health care as something people can just pay for if they only have the will to do it.

Consider other public goods provided by taxes: Public schools. Fire departments. We don’t insist that everyone who wants an education for their children must hire teachers or enroll is a private school. And we don’t insist that everyone who wants to protect his house from fire must hire their own private fire department. Health care can be treated like that.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

My point really is that good health care is available, almost always to people who can’t afford it (particularly via charity care). It may not be perfect health care, but it’s usually very good.

A totally unsupported and unsupportable statement.

 

[VonDerTann]

Leaf, that’s rather unhelpful.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Leaf, that’s really lacking in insight.

You are entitled to your opinion.

 

[VonDerTann]

Yeah, but why just troll along and shove a stick in my eye? Do you think you changed any minds? Did it add anything to the discussion?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Yeah, but why just troll along and shove a stick in my eye? Do you think you changed any minds? Did it add anything to the discussion?

No personal insult was intended. My comment was solely directed to the claim that people who cannot afford health care can still get it - and really good care at that. It is helpful to dispel myths like that.

 

[VonDerTann]

No, a “myth” would be to say, “charity care is substandard care” which is what you allege. Charity care AKA free care is in fact generally available in the US. Further, there aren’t, for example, “2 tracks, cadillac insurance and charity care” in hospitals; in the COVID wards the rich and the penniless are in adjoining beds.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Yes, with covid-19 we are treating everyone equally. But that has not been true of diabetes. One of the lessons of this pandemic has been to raise the consciousness of the need for universal health care.

 

[jeannetherese]

But this refers to charity, and I haven’t seen any criticism of charity on this thread.
Charity, to me, involves freely giving out of the goodness in one’s heart.
Communal taxation, may involve some freely giving, but for others will be forced giving.
It also distances the giver from the recipient by placing layers of bureaucracy between the two.
And, it eliminates the ability of the giver to use disgression to determine how his or her charity will be used.
It’s not charity, in my mind, when my money is taken through taxation to fund abortion or assisted suicide/euthenasia. It’s murder and I do not want to be involved in it.
In my mind, single payer health care is an attempt to buy me off, offering medical treatment for me, if I’ll just turn away from the way the young and old are thrown under the bus. It’s tempting-but that doesn’t make it good.
I’d rather take my chances like everyone else and at least, if I die early, it’s not at the expense of those groups who are outside of the labor market and all-to-often, seen as expendable.

 

[jeannetherese]

A totally unsupported and unsupportable statement.

I can support it.
I had a major emergency surgery without insurance about 10 years ago. Charity care covered my entire hospitalization.
I have helped other seek charity care.

 

[jeannetherese]

There are lifestyle choices involved with many cases of diabetes. Encouraging home cooking, healthy recipes and exercise might go a long way towards addressing this.

 

[TMC]

is a person able to achieve it on their own without any interference from someone else?

a right isn’t dependent on the services of others. I have a right to these things only as far as my own effort goes. a right isn’t dependent on the charity of others.

Taking care of others is a responsibility.

being taken care of is a privilege.

This is not only wrong, its completely backwards. Virtually all rights depend on the acts of others. Can you name a right you have that you have sustained without the assistance of others? (You realize that your viewpoint on this couldn’t be more at odds with the Church teachings, right?)

 

[TMC]

But this refers to charity, and I haven’t seen any criticism of charity on this thread.
Charity, to me, involves freely giving out of the goodness in one’s heart.
Communal taxation, may involve some freely giving, but for others will be forced giving.
It also distances the giver from the recipient by placing layers of bureaucracy between the two.
And, it eliminates the ability of the giver to use disgression to determine how his or her charity will be used.

So would you also support providing other vital services, such as the fire department, police and so on only through charity? Why are those things appropriately financed by government, but health care must be done through charity?

 

[Anrakyr]

My point really is that good health care is available, almost always to people who can’t afford it (particularly via charity care). It may not be perfect health care, but it’s usually very good.

When you pass out downtown the paramedics aren’t going to wait to ask you what hospital is “in network.” You are expected to comparrison shop while drifting in and out of consciousness?

Even if you do end up at the correct hospital, the doctor himself maybe out of network.

Here’s your huge unexpected life saving bill. Good thing you advocated for yourself!

I posit that causes all sorts of problems, including a decline in the quality of care.

You posit incorrectly. While I may roll me eyes a bit at wait times it’s because I don’t have something that can’t. The biggest issue is the lines for non immediate emergency care.
Broken bones, stitches that sort of thing.
If you need help and are in enough pain they wisk you right where you need to go.

It’s a odd comfort when you advocate for yourself correctly and are made to sit and wait.

a question, not an indictment, it still stands

Logical fallacy means you shouldn’t say it. So no it doesn’t stand. You don’t get to make sweeping generalizations and you most certainly don’t get to beg the question.
The inference is an insult to everyone who has up to this point answered your question charitably.

This “ya but” isn’t constructive. You have your answer, why it’s an answer and how.

Take it and go.