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Old 08-14-2009, 09:26 AM
Honus Honus is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2002
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MS Fowler View Post
Even if I grant that Health Care is a Right, it doesn't automatically mean that the government must pay for...
I don't think anyone, not even Sarah Palin, denies that we all have a right to health care, at least in the sense you describe that right. If I have the means to pay for it, there is no law anywhere (not even in any of Obama's proposals) that prohibits me from getting whatever health care I want, unless that health care is illegal in some other way.

The question is not whether we have a right to health care. The question is whether we have a right to health care even when we can't pay for it. It's like the right to counsel for criminal defendants. In Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court found that it is intolerable to allow the state to convict people who can't afford a lawyer, so now indigent criminal defendants have the right to a state-provided lawyer. The debate we have now is whether it is tolerable for poor people to go without health care and whether we can afford to do something about it. It's a much tougher question than was faced in the Gideon case, IMHO.

Speaking of which, and not to hijack the thread, I highly recommend the book Gideon's Trumpet. Required reading about our criminal justice system, IMHO.
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