[quote=greekfire]I do not intend to discount the many fine arguments that have been made up to this point. Caloric intake of different individuals from differing ethnic backgrounds is well and fine and something to take into consideration, but it misses the main thrust of this thread’s over-arching question: Is healthcare a right or a good?[/quote]
What, you don’t enjoy discussing the fine points of polynesian diet? Where ELSE are you going to get THAT kind of analysis?
As has been raised before: it might depend on what you mean by “healthcare”.
Do you mean emergency care or do you mean *everyone* in the country has a *right* to lifetime free consumption of *every* treatment that our technologists have been able to devise – regardless of cost?
My personal answer would be: no.
If you’re gonna have 6 kids, I hope you have a plan for how to pay for them.
You might have the right to *pursue* happiness, unfetterred, but that doesn’t mean that you have the right to take your neighbor’s money to pay for your health issues, that might be random, or might be self-inflicted.
If you think about Jefferson, the Federalist papers, etc., was there really an anticipation of handouts of this magnitude? I don’t think so (especially given that Jefferson was a self-reliant farmer) but I’m willing to be proved wrong.
Just, if you’re going to assert a “right”, admit that you’re asserting a new obligation for a country that is not in such good shape with its current entitlements…
Further acknowledge that it is the nature of beauracracies to grow, therefore it is likely that the obligations due to this will grow over time.
