A Tricky Question
This is the basic question lurking behind an argument I’m currently having on LJ. It’s a simplified argument there, and this is even more simplified, but I think that coming to an understanding about this simple issue is key to even being able to talk about health care. And the one thing I cannot stand is knowing that people are suffering and there isn’t even a meaningful debate going on about it yet. (As I said elsewhere, it’s telling when a high-school-educated guy from Flint, MI is doing more to investigate the state of the current health care system than all the major news media put together…)
But you don’t care about all that. You just want to click and answer a question…so here you go!
Should access to medical help when one is sick or injured be considered a "Human Right"?
19 devoted students of Roshi accepted this page in 0.262 seconds without moving, or saying a word.
I wish the answer was a simple yes…
But in reality, there are plenty of other issues to consider such as moral hazard (the likelihood that someone living in a country with a strong public healthcare system will take more risks with his/her health), how doctors are rewarded (if doctors are rewarded by performance, then their rational course of action is not to treat someone they know will die, which may lead to a inequitable health care system)… and that’s two fairly complex topics. There are many many more.
Another current example, Thailand has recently sought the UN to waive a patent for a certain drug owned by a US company so they can produce it cheaply for a good chunk of their population (sorry I can’t recall what disease/drug it was). Now, you can say it’s a good thing that many people will be able to afford treatment and lives will be saved.
But is that fair to the pharmaceutical company that spent hundreds of millions of dollars researching and perfecting the drug for human consumption? If the UN waives the patent laws for this drug for the Thai government, this will discourage capital from being invested into drug research, thus weakening the innovation of drugs, which makes us worse off in the long term.
Unfortunately “human right” or not, I think it’s one of those things that has to run its course of time (I mean at least a decade or so) before healthcare has a better public profile, and is in a better shape all around the world.
Chris
I agree that it’s a complex issue. I don’t agree with your point about Thailand, because it’s quite obvious that drug companies are spending much more of that money on marketing than they want to admit (otherwise, um, they’d admit it — all of them refuse to release the actual numbers when it comes to how much they spend on research), and moreover, it’s obvious that for-profit companies, unless VERY strictly regulated, are in no way the best people to be holding the keys to public health. Put simply, they benefit (in the short-term anyway) when people are sick. Baaaad scene.
I do think the problems will take time to fix. But I don’t think they’ll ever be fixed if everyone doesn’t admit that there ARE problems, serious ones that need our immediate attention if we have any hope of fixing them at all.
I’m scared how much denial I see, how much of a let’s-just-let-these-giant-corporations-handle-it attitude, in people in general. I keep hoping it’s just because I live in Michigan, Land of Enforced Corporate Worship…
Thanks for the comment!
I voted no. In the interest of coming to an understanding, let me see if I can explain my rationale.
See, there are rights, and there are moral obligations.
Rights are to keep people from taking things away from you. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. All the rights in the Bill of Rights: religion, speech, property rights, etc.; these are all things you have to begin with, no one has to give them to you. Your right is the right to exercise them without anyone stopping you. And others do not have to give up anything that is theirs in order for you to have these rights. By definition, two persons’ rights do not impinge on each other. They exist of themselves. They are free.
Then there are moral obligations. Too feed the hungry, clothe the naked, educate the ignorant, succor the sick. These deal precisely with things that someone does not already have. Health, money, property. If I am genuinely unable to procure these things on my own, then in order to give them to me others must sacrifice money (property) & time (freedom). In other words, we have a moral obligation to GIVE UP our Rights to help the suffering.
Now, while it is government’s job to protect our rights from enemies foreign and domestic, it is not government’s job to make sure we all do everything we are morally obligated to. Government should keep you from stealing my car, but not seize your money to pay my grocery bill. I should stop you from knifing me, but not conscript you to push my wheelchair. Yes, we are MORALLY obligated to give aid to each other, but it is not the government’s job to legislate morality. Indeed, the government prevents me from fulfilling my moral obligations, for insofar as I am coerced to render aid at the point of a gun, I am unable give it freely.
I see your point about moral obligation, and I agree that those things can’t be legislated *when* they’re not part of the necessary contingent of human rights. However, to say that health care shouldn’t be legislated is in conflict with what you said first, about people having the RIGHT to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…none of which can be attained if one’s health is in bad shape and untreated. So depriving anyone of a reasonable chance at being healthy IS depriving them of one or more of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
Moral obligations beyond providing the basic human rights shouldn’t be legislated, true. But not suffering and/or dying because you don’t have money IS a human right, IMO.
Thanks for your answer!