Perhaps the bohemian nurse would be willing to accept only 80% of her compensation when she treats a Medicaid patient. That would be charitable.

However, when government coercion forces her to accept 80% (as it does to doctors), that is called enslavement and THEFT.

Wake up! Stop treading on inalienable rights just because you “need” it

It is the working poor who are already paying for the non-working poor. Please don’t imagine that Medicaid comes from some infinite money pool the government has. The government only has the money that it harvests from the citizens that produce money. The vast majority of that money comes from the low-mid class.

When a product becomes free (a right), the demand becomes infinite.

But of course I deny the charge; my point here is not how we should choose to spend our public money—I think we should increase access to health care; programs like WIC sound great, and amenable to just the kind of argument I would wish to make for them; here is a great need; we can meet it in this way, and this is a better use of our money than these other uses; therefore, lets do it.

My point is simply to suggest that how we think about these arguments is important; and that the “positive rights” way of thinking about them is not satisfactory. Pointing out that seeing needs in terms of positive rights leads to conflict with negative rights may seem hardhearted—but in fact it works out otherwise. Production must come before consumption and paying attention to conditions that will promote it in fact makes possible the meeting of needs. We can debate what to do with our public money because we are prosperous enough to have some to debate about. The countries in the world that have the healthiest populations and the best health care are those in which negative rights have been respected. I do not believe that this is coincidence. It is indeed time for us to join other such countries in providing a level of universal access to heatlh care, because the need is there and we can meet it both practically and morally—by respecting negative rights as we do so.

We do better than that. We measure our desire by our ability to make others pay.

A common phrase today is that we are a “rich” country. The reality is a very small percentage of people pay the bulk of the tax burden. The type of “rights” most often proposed, will only increase this burden, and thus, at some point make it economically undesirable to offer heath insurance to any person.

We need to measure our desire with our ability to pay.

Steve Lucas

As a psychiatric social worker, I’m a lot closer than most health workers to providing care for free. I make less than a teacher, less than a factory worker, less than a truck driver. I daily help the homeless that Dr. Huddle is so convinced exist to take away his “negative rights.” They are human beings. They are his equals.

While some people may not think that healthcare is a “human right”, it is the ONLY thing that is correct when people rant and use the phrase: “my God given right”….