CreateDebate is a social debate community built around ideas, discussion and democracy.
If this is your first time checking out a debate, here are some quick tips to help get you started:
Arguments with the highest score are displayed first.
Argument replies (both in favor and in opposition) are displayed below the original argument.
To follow along, you may find it helpful to show and hide the replies displayed below each argument.
To vote for an argument, use these icons:
You have the power to cast exactly one vote (either up or down) for each argument.
Once you vote, the icon will become grayed out and the argument's score will change.
Yes, you can change your vote.
Debate scores, side scores and tag scores are automatically calculated by an algorithm that primarily takes argument scores into account.
All scores are updated in real-time.
To learn more about the CreateDebate scoring system, check out the FAQ.
When you are ready to voice your opinion, use the Add Argument button to create an argument.
If you would like to address an existing argument, use the Support and Dispute link within that argument to create a new reply.
There is no such thing as an automatic right to any social handout including health care.
The only right people have to public funded services are those who they have contributed towards such a facility for a specific period of time.
The Africans dying of starvation and disease do not have access to healthcare because they are, always have been and always will be totally incapable of fending for themselves.
If anyone tries to argue that everyone in the world has a right to healthcare then they must detail how such a 'right' could be funded.
To smugly claim the moral high ground by self-righteously stating that healthcare is a right without submitting their plan for fiscal funding is no more than sanctimonious hot air.
Is a healthy population free of the worry of bankruptcy due to ill-health a priority political aspiration, or is it entirely acceptable and inevitable to see people die of cancer on the street when they're too sick to work to pay for their expensive treatment?
It's a matter of willpower and priorities.
Left up to the populace in a direct vote, I would wager that the outcome would be a landslide victory for universal comprehensive healthcare, free at the point of end-user contact. I don't think there is any substantial base among working class man or woman who would oppose such a precedent, at least not sufficient to stop it being passed into law.
People of substance and ability are able to recognize the necessity for making provision for all eventualities including ill health and hard economic times.
The weak and incapable will, as proven a million times over in such countries as the U.K, use the safety net of a national health service and other over generous benefits as a hammock and contribute little or nothing towards its funding.
This in turn leads to a two tier health service where the very rich can afford to pay for and commandeer the top medical people whilst everyone else has to wait for a secondary service.
No matter what sanctimonious bellowing you do about a free health service, it simply doesn't work in practice.
Because of it's inevitable misuse even people who have contributed to a, 'so called', free national health service have to wait for up to two years for the treatment of cancer and other life threatening diseases, in many cases, too many cases, they don't survive.
In numerous cases people have to wait for three months just for an initial assessment of their malady while the wealthy are diagnosed and have treatment commenced within one to two weeks.
On a recent B.B.C, programme one person who was permanently in extreme pain was quoted two years for a hip replacement operation and referred to a 'pain management' clinic. When the sufferer asked how long would it take if he went privately he was offered surgery within 'ONE WEEK'.
A national health service is an unsustainable drain on any nation's finances and encourages people to develop a more irresponsible attitude towards their own health as they reason, wrongly, ah to hell, I'll eat, drink and smoke shit and let the 'national health look after me.
Unfortunately life will always have winners and losers and providing a seemingly free health service won't change this.
Taking out appropriate insurance and/or putting a realistic % of one's earnings aside to deal with any health or economic crisis is the way the self reliant approach their lives.
People of substance and ability are able to recognize the necessity for making provision for all eventualities including ill health and hard economic times.
Sounds like eugenics to me.
The weak and incapable will, as proven a million times over in such countries as the U.K, use the safety net of a national health service and other over generous benefits as a hammock and contribute little or nothing towards its funding.
Almost everybody uses the NHS in the UK. Weak or otherwise. Everybody who pays taxes by default contributes towards it. As for those who don't, are you suggesting we force such disabled or elderly people who can't contribute, to pay for healthcare they can't afford, with welfare you're unwilling to grant them? If so, then that is essentially a policy of cultural cleansing, which makes you a heartless moron, someone I would take lasting pleasure in ostracising completely from my society.
This in turn leads to a two tier health service where the very rich can afford to pay for and commandeer the top medical people whilst everyone else has to wait for a secondary service.
We have the choice between private health insurance or public healthcare. The latter is free at the point of contact, and the surgeons an doctors are of excellent quality. I've had six major surgeries on the NHS, without any issues whatsoever.
No matter what sanctimonious bellowing you do about a free health service, it simply doesn't work in practice.
Says the American who has never experienced it.
Because of it's inevitable misuse even people who have contributed to a, 'so called', free national health service have to wait for up to two years for the treatment of cancer and other life threatening diseases, in many cases, too many cases, they don't survive.
What a load of shit. 94.1% of cancer patients in the UK begin treatment within a fortnight of diagnosis, 98% within 31 days, and the outliers to this are entirely missed appointments and refusal for treatments.
In numerous cases people have to wait for three months just for an initial assessment of their malady while the wealthy are diagnosed and have treatment commenced within one to two weeks.
It depends on the malady. Rich people don't get preferential treatment through the national health service. They pay high fees for independent private care.
On a recent B.B.C, programme one person who was permanently in extreme pain was quoted two years for a hip replacement operation and referred to a 'pain management' clinic. When the sufferer asked how long would it take if he went privately he was offered surgery within 'ONE WEEK'.
Most people can't afford independent private surgeries, which is exactly why the NHS is available. We all have the option to purchase private health insurance if our means dictate we can afford it. We also have the option to use the public health service if our means are not sufficient to pay for private treatment. Private health insurance in the UK is also several times cheaper than the average US equivalent.
A national health service is an unsustainable drain on any nation's finances and encourages people to develop a more irresponsible attitude towards their own health as they reason, wrongly, ah to hell, I'll eat, drink and smoke shit and let the 'national health look after me.
The average Brit is healthier than the average American. If what you were saying was true, it would be the other way around. What you forget is where American schools are serving fries and burgers, British schools are mandated to offer healthy meals; where Americans are harping on about freedom this and freedom that, British institutions are making legal steps to safeguard the health of children; where American healthcare systems comprehensively profiteer from the ill-health of citizens, British national health knows that the most effective way of keeping costs down is to ensure a generally healthy population to begin with.
Unfortunately life will always have winners and losers and providing a seemingly free health service won't change this.
It clearly has changed things for millions of people in this country who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford the burden of expensive US-style healthcare. The number one cause of bankruptcy in all the United States is medical bills. Not in the history of the NHS has anyone ever been bankrupted by medical costs. In fact, an enlightening statistic for you: the US government spends, per capita, three times as much tax money on American healthcare as the UK spends on British healthcare, yet your average American still has to fork out anywhere from $900 to $4,300 per year, depending on the size of the family covered and the quality of coverage.
Taking out appropriate insurance and/or putting a realistic % of one's earnings aside to deal with any health or economic crisis is the way the self reliant approach their lives.
What a moronically, pointlessly elitist mindset to have. You, my idiot friend, don't even see how bad your countrymen have it. There is a reason that every other developed country has adopted a universal healthcare system: it works. Everybody else can't be wrong.
People like you with mad dog's shit for brains are not interested in, nor indeed able to grasp the indisputable facts proven by reality, so it is therefore futile in presenting the truth of a given subject as it falls on barren ground.
The elderly should have made provision for their senior, non earning years during their lifetime.
Truly disabled people who have no relatives to provide for them should be cared for by the state, they come under a special category.
It's a shame that one of the six major surgical operations you had didn't include a brain transplant.
You have defeated your own argument by suggesting that the rich can and do pay privately to receive priority treatment.
The only thing worse than your inaccurate bullshit is your verbosity.
But, alas I must recognise the futility of trying to penetrate the granite-like cranium of a parasitic leech who relies on the taxpayers of his country to fund the treatment of his crumbling body and diseased mind.
Why don't you climb into your wheelchair and go for a burn up some night along the M1 in the contra direction without any lights.
Either way, do try to get out more into the real world and become less resentful.
You're a seriously sick individual in both body and mind with too much time on his hands.
The elderly should have made provision for their senior, non earning years during their lifetime.
The elderly are the moral responsibility of the able-bodied to care for: that's why we have taxes that pay them pensions.
Truly disabled people who have no relatives to provide for them should be cared for by the state, they come under a special category.
I'm glad we agree on something.
You have defeated your own argument by suggesting that the rich can and do pay privately to receive priority treatment.
They pay for private treatment not carried out by public healthcare. That's not priority treatment via the public health service, that's independent treatment at their own expense. Two different things.
All the rest of this is just shite.
Parasitic leech? Two jobs mate. Relies on the taxpayer? I am one. Crumbling body? Lol I've conquered more by simply being alive than you could hope to achieve until the day you're found autoerotically asphyxiated in some closet, ridding us all of your incomprehensible stupidity. Wheelchair? I don't need nor have one. Resentment? Some serious psychological projection going on here. Too much time? Says the guy with two accounts on CreateDebate containing hundreds of similarly impotent diatribes between them.
Go back to beating off in your socks, you crusty old goat. Your day is done.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in public services for the needy (within a budget), but I don't think healthcare is a right. You need food to live and that's not a right. You need sleep and water and clothes and none of those are rights. Shelter - not an automatic right. Even when you die, getting a ceremony or burial is not.
So basically, you want society to guarantee they'll fix your broken arm, but if afterward you're homeless, freezing and starving then that's your own problem.
But in case you mean whether we have an intrinsic right to our intrinsic rights, then yes, we do. If you can defend that right, then it's yours, else it disqualifies on both levels, just as it ought to.
That's not what I am asking. Do you mean physically defend? Defend through argumentation? Physically defend your argumentation? What do you mean by "Defend"?
Rights are a system of economics? That's not correct.
No, the way you can defend rights can depend on the system of economics. But since that itself isn't an intrinsic part of society, the rights would be somewhere between contractual and intrinsic. (Which, I think, answers also the other questions.)
Because, as I said, it answers the other questions as well.
Except perhaps that first one, in case it was literal. Imagining a society too different from ours is almost impossible - Marx failed in his attempt, and he wasn't an idiot, for an example. So I'd rather not, unless you really want me to, in which case it's a pure anarchism.
In economic terms, healthcare is a commodity. It fits the category of goods and services and is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Healthcare is not a right in the philosophical sense and can never be a right beyond the statutory sense.
Healthcare is just one of many supposed rights created by a political philosophical position that is anathema to rights as such. By dropping the philosophical foundations for the concept of rights, political thinkers are able to baselessly create as many "rights" as they want, thus inflating quantity and devaluing the concept.
This may also be the reason why the group most interested in ignoring basic gender will pretend there are 33 of them (a number sure to change).
Welcome to California. It is a state of a perfect set of laws at least in the minds of those wedded to the legislative pursuit of social justice. Under the one-party Democrat rules spending on fairness tops $100 billion every year.
Does the 100 billion spent on fairness make healthcare a right in California.
Of course you liberals think any amount of money that comes out of someone else's pocket is a cheap price tag. Do you think just magically appears, libby?
Right wingers SAY that people can get treatment at the ER. Of course, they KNOW the taxpayer is PAYING for the ER visit, don't they?? Why would they tell someone that if they DIDN'T have a RIGHT to health care?? They'd be saying, DIE in the street poor people.. I OWE you NOTHING.. But, they DON'T say that, do they?? Consequently from this liberals standpoint, it LOOKS like right wingers actually do BELIEVE health care is a RIGHT.
So, if the taxpayer is going to be the hook for LOTS of peoples medical bills, shouldn't we DO it in the most CONSERVATIVE and EFFICIENT manner possible??? Sure, we should. That would be, of course, single payer.
Well, this is moreso dependent on whether this question is asking what it is currently or what it should be. Either way, under the assumption that a commodity is something useful that can be bought or sold, I guess healthcare technically qualifiies as that, but that doesn't mean it should be something that exists purely to fuel the economy. Regardless of socioeconomic status, no one should suffer because they can't afford apt medical care.
No one goes without apt medical care to believe that is nonsense and a fallacy (a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument.) Community hospitals around the country can't refuse anyone medical care whether they can pay for the care or not. No one suffers due to the lack of medical care if they do so it is by personal choice.
If you're purely talking about emergency situations then no, people without the means to pay for medical care can't be turned away, and it'd be ridiculous to claim otherwise. That's one reason why those who aren't financially well off will often turn to the emergency room for more minor afflictions. But dental care, prescriptions, and other things that aren't usually thought of as urgent people can and do struggle to afford.
Remember what you wrote. no one should suffer because they can't afford apt medical care. Dental care is not medical care that's dental care , prescriptions are not medical care that is prescriptions prescribed by a doctor that anyone can get at a community hospital. No one has to struggle to get any of the services you describe. That is just not true.
In 2010 - 1007 free clinics operated in 49 states and the District of Columbia. Annually, these clinics provided care for 1.8 million individuals, accounting for 3.5 million medical and dental visits.
That is 20 free clinics per state as of 2010 under the Obama Regime. Whom has to struggle to afford any care that person might need.
Believe or not, sometimes dental care falls under the same category as medical care. In certain instances when it is deemed medically necessary, health insurance will actually cover certain dental procedures. As far as the rest, parts of your argument are essentially based off of semantics and my use of the term medical care.
Prescriptions, unless immediately required, can't always be given away at no cost, and certain programs or free clinics aren't an option for everyone. Besides, free clinics are often understaffed and the doctors going there are commonly overworked with low budgets.
Sometimes people without insurance have to pay for often expensive medications out of their own pocket, and many people wait before seeing a professional in the US in part because of cost. Even with insurance, some people can't afford 20$ copays whenever they visit the doctor.
Now, nowhere did I say that in emergency situations people struggle to get the care that they need, but it really shouldn't be a point of contention whether or not every person should be able to afford the basic things they need to be healthy without getting into debt. Even being brought to the hospital in a life or death situation in an ambulance costs money.
Besides, even if you don't see this as a problem in this country, you can't claim that it isn't an issue in some others.
Well, you really seem to like arguing over word usage, but I never said that no one has access to health or medical care. Now what I did say is that people often struggle to get the care they need outside of emergency services.
Yes, free clinics exist and I have nothing but respect for the professionals who put their time into them, but according to what you said there's 20 per state, which really isn't a lot in larger places. And if someone who struggles to afford health care of any kind doesn't live relatively close to one of them, do you really think they'll have the means to travel several hours out of their way to visit one?
Even for the hundreds of people who do visit free clinics daily, they don't always get the same quality of care as patients who go to for profit clinics. These no cost facilities are often crowded which more easily allows for spread of disease, and the physicians/dentists who volunteer at these places are usually overworked and can't provide the ideal level of attention toward their patients. Sometimes people without insurance are even turned away from free clinics because of how busy they are. This can't be a permanent solution, and it shouldn't be controversial to note that yes, there are some problems with our medical system.
Why does anyone need to struggle when free health care and dental care is available in the United States. So free clinics don't offer quality care now according to you. When and where are people turned away from free clinics because of no insurance. You have some numbers for that assumption you make.
I didn't say that they don't provide any quality care, just that they can't provide the same level of care as for profit clinics. You keep twisting my words in a way that doesn't make sense, and there's really no excuse to call me out over the claims I'm making considering I provided you with two links in my previous post that explain some of the issues with free clinics. This is really almost ironic, considering you yourself have made quite a few claims without providing any citation.
Free clinics aren't a perfect solution to some of the problems in our medical system, and some of the "free" healthcare programs you talk about still have a minor fee. And some doctor offices won't even accept certain insurances which typically cover low income people.
