1. The Health service was mention in the US. The US Health service looks after public health issues (sanitation, disease, etc.) and does not hire doctors to practice medicine. I could be wrong on this.

2. Socialized Healthcare does not guarantee that everyone will get even basic health care. I say this because even if people are “covered” and have a “right” to care, if they do not have actual access to care, it is as if they were not covered at all.

For example my father-in-law went to see the doctor in Hong Kong, where they have socialized care based on the British system. I wonder how often this happens to poor people over there who can not afford to go to the better, private hospitals. He waited for three hours until he was able to see the doc, who, after checking him out, told him to get back in line because the fee paid to him by the government for a checkup did not cover his costs. You also hear about year long waiting lines in Canada for mammograms, when in the states one can get on in the same week if not the same day as calling one’s doctor. I have not even started on fairly standard, lifesaving procedures, like the removal of tumors, that people have to wait for as their problem gets worse. Sometimes these people die. How is the end result of this any different than if these people were not covered?

One more question. If socialized medicine is such a cure for a system like ours, why do private healthcare systems often sprout up besides socialized care? Could it be that socialized systems do not work well at all?

My initial comment was not intended as the opening salvo in a discussion of “socialized medicine” (ah, that great shibboleth) or a debate over how the government should meet its responsibility to spend our money to provide for the national defense (against all enemies, foreign and domestic, viral or microbial). I was trying to state a more fundamental proposition: That we should avoid loose talk about rights when we mean “goods” (in the economists’ sense) or priveleges or aspirations.

Your quoting the First Amendment illustrates my point. The language of that amendment preserves to us certain rights (free speech, press, religion assembly), and imposes on others (Congress, and by judicial interpretation, the rest of the governments, state and federal) certain obligations (butt out of those things). It does not, however, impose any such obligations on me as a private citizen. In fact, your exercise of your constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech could result in my punching you in the nose. (I could be charged with assault and battery, but not with a constitutional violation.) Similarly, despite the hue and cry about censorship when a TV network decides not to run a program that it has decided steps on the wrong toes, the network has no obligations under the First Amendment–only the government has.

What do we mean, then, if we say that health care is a basic human right? Who is obligated to provide that? Physicians? Hospitals? The government? If there is no person so obligated, how can we speak of there being a right?

I’m not completely familiar the various international conventions you are citing. But you seem to be saying that all nations are under an obligation to abide by thier findings and it seems that they are obligated regardless of whether they attended or agreed. Like I said I don’t know, but to me sovereignty dictates that no foreign government can dictate what the US is obligated to do.

Furthermore, I believe the debate is very much a matter of what is considered healthcare. I agree that there may be millions of people that don’t have affordable healthcare, but healthcare is an industry driven by economics and in a free trade society we cannot oblige those companies to bankrupt themselves to provide a socialist health care system.

Since we, speaking as Americans, are willing to entertain the idea that government should provide some kind of health care the debate becomes what to allow and who gets it. If I have a job that offer’s healthcare and I opt to pay for it, why should I pay, when someone else gets it for free. Shouldn’t we all get it for free? If its being provided by the government who pays. The answer is the taxpayer.

The churches own welfare system recognizes that families first have the obligation to help thier family members, then after those resources are exhausted the church may assist.

We are assuming that people have basic social rights, that in my opinion stretch beyond what government is really responisble for. However, one thing that I would be in favor of if health care is adopted as it is in progress of being is for government to set expectations and hold people accountable.

Why pay for cancer treatment or liver transplants if the patient is an avid smoker or drinker and the illness is related to something that could reasonably have been avoided. Going further down that slipery slope, what about those who eat unhealthy foods. Should the governement then be excempt from paying for treatments related to heartdisease and arthritis?

I think this is a very valid debate. If the taxpayers are going to pay for your treatment then surely we have our own right to determine how that money is spent.

That is also why we must first determine if the government has that responsibility. If we find that it does, we need to debate how it applies to various situations.

Interestingly, the news article itself is kind of misleading:

“LONDON (Reuters) – Nearly 70,000 women, almost half of them in Asia, die from unsafe abortions each year despite government pledges made a decade ago to improve human rights and reproductive health, researchers said Wednesday.”

This seems to imply that Asia is unusually bad, but since Asia has over half of the worlds population, it actually implies that Asia is unusually good.

This being said, 70,000 is a tragic number no matter how you look at it.

First, what governments made those pledges a decade ago? It makes it sound like all governments everywhere got together a decade ago and decided to provide safe and free abortions for everyone. Sort of global.

Second, would a pledge to improve human rights necessarily mean improving safe abortion resources? Are those two issues really that synonymous?

Lot’s of loaded language, if you ask me.

Second, would a pledge to improve human rights necessarily mean improving safe abortion resources? Are those two issues really that synonymous?”

In international conventions, access to health care and reproductive services IS considered a human right.

In fact, this is recognized nearly everywhere — certainly everywhere in the industrialized nations — except the United States.

A majority of governments did, in fact, get together quite some time ago and promise women access to reproductive health care, including abortion. If you want to see which governments made the pledges, see the list of signatories to the relevant conventions on economic and social rights.

I have long had rather mixed feelings about our stance on this issue. Many countries pay lip service to these as human rights and then ignore them. We don’t pretend to adopt the principle, we just ignore it. I suppose that we are at least honest in some perverse sense of the term.

The 70,000 fetuses had it especially bad.

Ryan, the statement says “human rights AND reproductive health, not just “human rights”.