I'm perplexed by why you think the SV elite voted in donald trump to keep the dirty masses down. Perhaps you should look at a county-by-county electoral map some day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

> This is what libertarian and 'eliminate regulation' types want.

False. Healthcare is not a human right, but the insane inflation of healthcare costs would be avoided by removing a large portion of the regulation surrounding it. If hospitals actually had to compete to get patients, based on affordability, among other factors, healthcare would be far cheaper, and private charity/need-sharing would take the place of insurance.

That's not true. Healthcare has always been expensive. Even before regulations. Hundreds, even thousands of years back. The same regulations you're whining about made snake-oils illegal and other quacks from practicing on people who don't know better. The good old days of unregulated healthcare... Google "doctors agree cigarette" and look at the Images. See all those ads. Those ads that cigs are good for your health and infants. Yea...

Back when people thought that healthcare should not be regulated.

Now, there's a lot of fuckery in the healthcare industry. A lot. Both, business side and gov side. Both are to blame. But just saying regulation is flat out bad. That's stupid. There are many issues and each have to be addressed.

Not just a one MAGIC PILL solution.

False, healthcare is a human right

False. Healthcare requires care, as in, labor. A right to someone else's labor is a right to enslave. Healthcare is about the most sugar-coated version of it imaginable, but it doesn't change that fundamentally the "right to healthcare" is the right to force others to take care of you.

Or, it’s an obligation on society to organise in such a way that healthcare is provided to anybody who needs it by whatever means you like. Taxes, charity, whatever else. Obligations are not per se unethical - the most basic one being not to cause harm to people in carrying out whatever you’re doing, but there’s many others - and current society uses taxes to ensure that their obligations are fulfilled, but there’s other options too.

>A right to someone else's labor is a right to enslave.

And yet there is a Constitutional right to a lawyer in most criminal cases if you can’t afford one. I can assure you, while public defenders might not get paid well and maybe many can’t afford their student loans, they are not slaves.

The slaves are the tax payers in your analogy, because they pay for the public defenders.

But that case is more defensible: the enforcing of the rule of law is powerful for freedom. So sacrificing some freedom to get a lot of freedom is an easy case.

Health services do not relate to freedom, but to the cost of insurance. If the government can provide a cheaper healthcare then it should provider a cheaper healthcare, and citizens can choose the government's plan and it will eat out the competition.

Why would the government need to ban the competition if its so good at providing insurance?

> Why would the government need to ban the competition if its so good at providing insurance?

In no country ever is private healthcare and competition banned. There is a free* hospital across the street from me and I have private healthcare.

It’s about acknowledging that a) it is cheaper for everyone if people with no money go to the doctor early, because a GP is 1k% less expensive to society than a hospital bed runout. This is one of the reasons healthcare in single payer countries is ~50% per capita.

B) people without money don’t deserve to die because they are poor and should have basic treatments, even when it is their own fault they are poor and make bad decisions.

* I pay tax which pays for the hospital

> In no country ever is private healthcare and competition banned. There is a free* hospital across the street from me and I have private healthcare.

Thats not factually true: there are many places that ban private healthcare, including canada. Then there are other conditions that punish private disproportionately: like funding public healthcare with taxes, but private healthcare with private funds: that means a person would have to pay 2 insurances to get private services. Also single payer really means there is only 1 insurance, so yes, it bans all other insurances.

> It’s about acknowledging that a) it is cheaper for everyone if people with no money go to the doctor early, because a GP is 1k% less expensive to society than a hospital bed runout. This is one of the reasons healthcare in single payer countries is ~50% per capita.

There are multiple issues why healthcare in the US is more expensive than "single payer systems", and preventative medicine is a small part.

> people without money don’t deserve to die because they are poor and should have basic treatments, even when it is their own fault they are poor and make bad decisions.

Is this moral line of yours defined by the country? Because if you want to save people's lives, single payer systems are very expensive. Its a lot better to open immigration and bring poor people from abroad.

Even the right to life and liberty requires the government to have people work at jobs to maintain security. Other than an-caps, even the most rabid libertarian thinks the government should provide national security.

Isn't that all forced "slave labor" by this same argument?

This is an unrealistic absolutist argument in any realistic view of the modern world with actual governments especially given the extreme excess of resources on earth to provide everyone with good medical care.

“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…”[1]

[1] Article 25 UN Declaration of Human Rights

The right to acquire it or the right to get it from someone else?

The right to it even if you are mentally ill, broke, bad at decision making or all of the above.

My point is definitely that you have an obligation to provide society funding for healthcare even if they don’t pay. Just like the military will defend them even if they don’t pay, or a firefighter will put out their house.

> The right to it even if you are mentally ill, broke, bad at decision making or all of the above.

The right to be provided something is the right to take from someone else. There is no escape to this, its a right that infringes on the right of others.

Theft cannot be a human right, and i would strongly reject anyone that defends such a thing, including the UN.

I understand now, when firefighters save homeless people, the homeless people are stealing from others.

This thread is going nowhere, you clearly value money more than the health of people less fortunate than you. Systemic poverty and sick people, who cares right.

I value liberty above everything else, partly because without liberty everything else also goes away.

You mention a trade-off with money and health, but the very idea of taking from some to give another is a violent expression. You might justify to yourself that is fine to rob and murder for the sakes of others. Others will think the same way.

Liberty for privileged people like yourself not born with disability or systemic poverty. Thanks for proving my point.

I’m no longer participating in this thread, and won’t read any replies.

Hot dog, there's a cheaper ER 30 minutes from here!

I can certainly imagine situations when I would choose waiting another 30 minutes over paying an extra $10k... Can't you?

Ooh, THIS one reuses sharps and passes the savings on to me!

Yeah, but this one provides free mosswort and radium supplements with all limb reattachments!

Communism would have all ERs equally shitty and expensive [to the taxpayer]. Is that all that better?

I mean, your argument holds true for everything. And yet, look around us and compare to any instance of communism on various extents. Capitalism is always better.

> I mean, your argument holds true for everything. And yet, look around us and compare to any instance of communism on various extents. Capitalism is always better.

Modern mixed economies are better, but there is a reason capitalism as a system (rather than a component of another system) died sooner than Soviet-style communism, to the extent that we now unironically call mixed economies with large socialized elements “capitalism”.

Among mixed economies, it's not the more strongly capitalist ones that have the most efficient, effective, or publicly popular health care systems, either.

You can stay off our communist roads then.

Enjoy bartering and purchasing your way across private property to something distant. (Yeah, fat chance you actually hold to your criticisms.)

Bartering? You dont need to State to exchange money :S

This is a very cool dichotomy you've presented me with.

Damn this was a crude comment.

I can't imagine a human right more fundamental than health care. What good is freedom of speech or assembly or trade to a dead person?

Patients in distress are usually not very able to make distinctions between hospitals based on pricing or really any other factor apart from perhaps proximity. This key point seems to not be addressed by any of the standard libertarian takes.

Edit: Also, I grew up in a country (India) where healthcare was definitely part of the market economy. And what that meant (and still does) was that people with money get high quality immediate care, and those without get shafted. That's what the market does to healthcare.

Oh, they do have a choice:

Pay up for the nearest facility, IF you have the funds to do so.

Or die.

> False. Healthcare is not a human right, but the insane inflation of healthcare costs would be avoided by removing a large portion of the regulation surrounding it.

....So it can only be for the rich.

Insurance is simple - you have a group pool their risk together so that everyone's protected.

Yet, when we try to discuss making an insurance pool the size of the country, for everyone, people like you go all "not a right".

When I see "not a right", I read into it as "Fuck you I got mine".. when there is plenty to go around for everyone.

> If hospitals actually had to compete to get patients, based on affordability, among other factors, healthcare would be far cheaper

Citation needed: prices are NOT linked to how much thing is, but how much the market will bear. Stating falsehoods to cover up your intent is disgusting. We know how c(r)apitalism works. We're rejecting that. Tried it, didn't work. Reiterating for better.

> private charity/need-sharing would take the place of insurance.

Uh huh. So non-christians need not apply? I know how this plays out... This is a citizenry issue, for the whole country. And you end up wanting to make it a fractured "small group" issue. People fall in cracks, and you don't care. Some "mythical" group will fix it.

> This is what libertarian and 'eliminate regulation' types want.

This statement is incorrect. Libertarians want competition in the emergency medical transport industry. If someone can offer a better service and at a lower cost, then that service should be an option.

All other things being equal, if it takes an ambulance 20 minutes to arrive on scene versus a ride share that takes 5 minutes, which is preferred? Granted ambulances provide more than simply transporting someone to a hospital, but those services could easily be applied under legal alternatives and done in a safe, effective, and efficient manner.

The libertarian argument is that it should not be illegal to let the market provide alternatives.