Under single payer, it is the government that decides who gets paid for what. It will be the government that will declare that if a Catholic hospital doesn’t perform abortions it will not be paid for other medical care given.
How moral is that?
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How moral is that?
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AlNg
Guest
That sounds nice but what happens when there are no doctors available or willing or able to take new patients? Doctors have a right to a decent life and should not be required to work themselves to death and to the detriment of their family life. There was a situation in Florida where doctors were being charged an excessive amount for malpractice or liability insurance and were being sued for frivolous reasons. It was in the news that a woman was about to give birth to a child, but she was a lawyer who had brought several doctors to court for malpractice in what was thought by many to be nothing more or less than harassment of the doctor over trivial matters. So she could not find a doctor in her state who would take her case. Every doctor said that he (or she) was already overwhelmed with work and was not able to take in new patients. If you make healthcare into a right for all, does that mean that the state will force a doctor to take a patient and threaten him with jail if he does not do so, even though he is already being overworked?
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
If you cite a specific case of someone using the laws in other countries to prove a point I will show you how their use of those laws is different from your appeal to the US laws. In most cases, they are not using those laws as a moral authority, but are using them to prove a pragmatic point that certain other ways of handling health care are possible. It is only the technical possibility that these other countries demonstrate. However the moral arguments are based on Church teaching, the bible, or other moral authorities.
It is important to distinguish between a right and a government power. Your scenario here actually describes healthcare, not as a right, but as a government power. The notion of a “positive right”, a “right” that government provides and pays for by taking money and labor from others, is not actually a right, but a privilege. If government can take it away, it is a privilege. A “negative right”, is a right exists and requires that government and others abstain from interfering with it.Viki63:
That sounds nice but what happens when there are no doctors available or willing or able to take new patients? Doctors have a right to a decent life and should not be required to work themselves to death and to the detriment of their family life. There was a situation in Florida where doctors were being charged an excessive amount for malpractice or liability insurance and were being sued for frivolous reasons. It was in the news that a woman was about to give birth to a child, but she was a lawyer who had brought several doctors to court for malpractice in what was thought by many to be nothing more or less than harassment of the doctor over trivial matters. So she could not find a doctor in her state who would take her case. Every doctor said that he (or she) was already overwhelmed with work and was not able to take in new patients.
If you make healthcare into a right for all, does that mean that the state will force a doctor to take a patient and threaten him with jail if he does not do so, even though he is already being overworked?
That said, your scenario is quite possible. A Catholic OBGYN or hospital may very well be required by force of law to perform abortions, as an example. While recent lawsuits attempting to do just that under current statutes were thrown out, a single payer statute could indeed be written in such a way that gives government that power.
GEddie, in post 11: “To oppose nationalized health-care is to hold that human life is secondary to the right to profit. The Church, whatever it may say now or in the past concerning socialism, is never going to say that.”
That is a claim that nationalized healthcare, a system we know to be used in other countries, is a moral choice.
The Church, the Bible. I’ve not seen in the Bible a call to force others against their will to care for the least of His children. It is a call to us to do so voluntarily.
Other moral authorities: Do you have a list, or at least an example. Apparently, the constitution isn’t one.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
GEddie did not even mention other countries, much less appeal to their laws as a moral authority, as you do with the constitution. Try again.
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AlNg
Guest
What is your definition of a “right”?
If someone has a right to healthcare what does that mean except that he is entitled to it? I don’t see how you can force a doctor to take a patient if he is already overbooked. What happens to your “right” when there are no doctors available?
That is precisely what a right is. I have no right to expect another to provide services without compensation, a contractual arrangement worked out in advance. I have a right to healthcare. I do not have a right to someone else’s property or labor in order to acquire it.JonNC:
What is your definition of a “right”?
If someone has a right to healthcare what does that mean except that he is entitled to it? I don’t see how you can force a doctor to take a patient if he is already overbooked. What happens to your “right” when there are no doctors available?
It doesn’t have to mention it specifically. One can see the appeal to the moral argument, such as it is, that nationalized healthcare is moral, while the implication is that a market based system is not.JonNC:
GEddie did not even mention other countries, much less appeal to their laws as a moral authority, as you do with the constitution. Try again.
But every time one hears the refrain that we are the only major country that doesn’t have nationalized healthcare, that is a claim to their moral standing. To deny that this is part of the argument, Leaf, is just ignoring the facts.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
But you mention the Constitution specifically in your argument.LeafByNiggle:
It doesn’t have to mention it specifically.JonNC:
GEddie did not even mention other countries, much less appeal to their laws as a moral authority, as you do with the constitution. Try again.
Yes, it is a moral argument. One I do not entirely agree with, though, because I don’t think Church teaching mandates national health care, as you said. But neither does it forbid it, which you have also said, if I understand rightly.
That particular argument is not one of morals. It is one of practicality only. (See, other countries can do it!)
Of course the argument of GEddie you quoted is a moral argument, but not one that depends on other nations’ laws.
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DarkLight
Guest
I feel like pointing out - we already have a right to certain other services, legally. Children have a right to education through the public school. Indigent adults have the right to a lawyer. We already have a right to be treated at the ER, too. None of these have resulted in widespread slavery or a massive inability to provide services or anything like that. So there’s no particular reason to expect that a national right to healthcare would produce those.
None of these are truly rights. They are more properly called entitlements.
If one has a right, government has no say in it, other than to protect it. There is a reason why government is not compelled to by me a printing press if I want to exercise right to freedom of the press, or an AR-15 if I can’t afford one.
If a person has to provide me with my rights, then he is a servant, giving up his property or labor.
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DarkLight
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Legal rights, if you will. But either way, the government has said in the U.S., legally, that every child must be provided the opportunity to access a free public education. Last I checked this has not led to massive enslavement of public school teachers or anything.
Maybe not enslaved, but the pay ain’t great.JonNC:
Legal rights, if you will. But either way, the government has said in the U.S., legally, that every child must be provided the opportunity to access a free public education. Last I checked this has not led to massive enslavement of public school teachers or anything.
Secondly, public education is a state responsibility, not federal.
Finally, the effort is out there to require doctors to perform procedures that may offend the conscience, such as abortion. The difference is significant
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philipl
Guest
I have to admit the reply I read about the VA providing acceptable health care is a first for me to read. The horror stories I have been told by friends of mine that are Vet and the stories I have read in the new contradict that post almost 100%.
The VA would be a great example as to why we dont want a single payer system.
The VA would be a great example as to why we dont want a single payer system.
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DarkLight
Guest
No, the pay isn’t great, although this is arguably because the states don’t want to spend money on education because the people who can afford money don’t want it to go to someone else’s kids, and the people who can’t afford to educate their kids wouldn’t be paying higher taxes anyway. But teachers aren’t forced to teach. (The issue of requiring doctors to perform certain procedures is certainly worth considering, but it’s a separate issue from the general idea of a right to healthcare. This is more similar to how you have a right to be treated in the ER without them checking if you’re able to pay first.)Maybe not enslaved, but the pay ain’t great.
Secondly, public education is a state responsibility, not federal.
Finally, the effort is out there to require doctors to perform procedures that may offend the conscience, such as abortion. The difference is significant
The worry a lot of us have is that, for someone like me, paying privately for the sort of medical care I need to stay employed, on the sort of income I can earn as a young adult, simply isn’t something I can do. And the idea of “charity” in this country substituting is, in my experience, frankly laughable - charities like that don’t exist unless it’s an emergency, and I don’t think they could without radically reforming society. Maybe I could have avoided the situation by planning ahead and entering a high paying career, but I hardly knew in advance that would be necessary, and we’re not in an economic situation where everyone can be in a high paying career.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
If that is your major objection to Single Payer Health Care, that can be accommodated by having individual states run Single Payer systems. With proper mutual agreements for transfers between states we could even accommodate people who move from one state to another with a pre-existing condition. Yup, I could support that.DarkLight:
Maybe not enslaved, but the pay ain’t great.JonNC:
Legal rights, if you will. But either way, the government has said in the U.S., legally, that every child must be provided the opportunity to access a free public education. Last I checked this has not led to massive enslavement of public school teachers or anything.
Secondly, public education is a state responsibility, not federal.
That is a potential defect in laws regarding health care, but such laws could exist with or without Single Payer Health Care, so that makes this issue, as serious as it is, irrelevant to the question at hand.
Interesting. Forcing people to kill babies against their will is irrelevant. Honestly, it may be the most relevant issue, because it speaks to the power government could exercise under a single payer system. And the only reason a law like that could exist outside of a single payer system is because of the mindset of the progressive movement that the right to religious free exercise should be subservient to “rights” that they favor.
It is a running theme in issues beyond healthcare, including insurance, business owners, and even an attack on the ministerial exception by the Obama administration, which fortunately lost in the SCOTUS.
This, and other individual rights, is precisely at the center of the debate.
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