Is there a right to health care?

Giap said:

I even posted it up for you to learn something and you did not. It says medical care which is health care. Here you go..

The UN declaration on Human Rights,

Article 25.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

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the The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) kind of makes the UN thing pointless, its law.

but its like making it against the law to murder somebody in a high rise building. kind of pointless for the UN don't you think?

The U.N. statement is not meant to be law...it is supposed to sway nations toward making something like the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

That it becomes irrelevant due to law...sorta makes it even more relevant.

While I well understand the failures, weaknesses, and sometimes pointless nature of the U.N......this situation seems to be a success.

tecoyah said:

The U.N. statement is not meant to be law...it is supposed to sway nations toward making something like the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

That it becomes irrelevant due to law...sorta makes it even more relevant.

While I well understand the failures, weaknesses, and sometimes pointless nature of the U.N......this situation seems to be a success.

Click to expand...

In some nations yes, the USA beat them to the punch here

I personally don't believe it's relevant whether or not it's defined as a "right". There are 2 reasons I can think of off the top of my head for treating it as one.

First, I believe we have a moral obligation to see to it that all citizens are provided the right to "life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness" EQUALLY (not depending on how much wealth you possess).

But from a pragmatic point of view, there is one "inherent" flaw in free market capitalism. It has no metric to evaluate the effect price has on demand. The coase theorem describes the problem fairly well, however, it doesn't provide any method of implementing controls. Until capitalism properly addresses the issue, it's pre-determined to fail.

Healthcare is a perfect example of the inflexibility of demand as price increases (and an extreme one). It would very closely represent one end of the spectrum, and perhaps a porsche or Ferrari on the other. All commodities and markets can be measured and controlled using caps on margins, and thereby protect consumers, while still allowing for adequate margins to attract entrepreneurs and investors, and promote competition and efficiency. But the most important benefit of using the metric to regulate business would be cost control of "inflexible demand" type industries. Lets face it, it makes no sense at all to allow economic predators to "redistribute wealth" by preying on consumers of necessities (I use the term necessities loosely.. the metric evaluation establishes a self-correcting accurate measure of how much something is "necessary").

Yikes! I'm rambling again, heh...