There has always been a payroll tax dedicated to Medicare.
Universal health does not exist. If it did, the villages that I work in, in Africa, would have health care.
Brendan,I believe Sheila uses the word "universal "as we use it also for suffrage,for example.
Understood, but given to whom the Pope was addressing in his statement, I would not read it as referring to national health systems at all, but to true, universal care.
Medicare doesn’t guarantee a “universal right” to health care, so how is it relevant to the discussion?
Thank you,Brendan.
It was related to an issue raised by another poster.
If you look at your link. The payroll tax only covers part A. Parts B and D are not funded by the payroll tax, which I already said, so I am not sure what your point is.
I agree there is no justification for either program.
There is no right to demand someone else provide for you.
I agree that we have an obligation to others, but our obligation to provide does not translate into their right to receive. I may be obligated to provide for those who suffer but they have no right to demand it of me. Their rights do not stem from my obligations.
True, but the question is not about the obligations pertaining to us but of the rights pertaining to others. I have acknowledged our obligations; what I reject is the belief that the obligation on our part to assist those in need becomes a right on their part to demand it of us.
Very well stated.
I only think this is true because the concept of right has decayed to basically mean entitlement. What does the Pope mean by “right?”
But you would not extend that reasoning to the unborn and their right to life, would you?
I traced this chain of responses back to post 211, and I think I found the source of the confusion. In that post, Darryl said
The analogy fails because the “right to life” is ultimately about the right to your own body. The unborn child belongs to himself, not to the parents. By the same token, the labor of the doctor belongs to the doctor, not to the patient. Saying there is a right to health care is saying that the doctor’s doesn’t own his own body.
The analogy was not meant to show that healthcare is a universal right. Pope Francis already made that point much more eloquently than I could. And Ender (whom I was responding to) accepted that it was a right. My analogy was meant to show that if you accept healthcare is a universal right, as Pope Francis said, there is no reason to exclude government from having a role in ensuring that right. For the purposes of illustrating that point (which is a different point from the one you seem to be opposing), the analogy was spot on.
I don’t think it is apt. As a right, they are only enforced by government as negative actions. That is, if one has a right, the government can only protect it from being abridged, rather than ensuring the outcome. It is a subtle difference, but meaningful.
It helps to remember that the government forced businesses to violate civil rights–Jim Crow laws. The proper government response was to abrogate those laws. Instead, the government has gone to the opposite extreme and violated the rights of individual businesses owners. Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have talked about the fact that Jim Crow came about because businesses were already integrating without government mandate. Things were independently moving toward integration. As usual, it was government that stepped in and made things worse, both by creating Jim Crow and by how they were overturned.
It is easy to speculate now on what would have happened without a government mandate. But it is still just speculation.
The unborn have a right to life independent of the rights and obligations of their mothers. It is certainly true that the mother has the obligation to care for her unborn child, but the child’s right is not based on the mother’s obligation. It is completely different than believing the right of the poor comes from the obligation of the rich.