Reply #56: Economics is not a viable argument

[Wickerman]

to say healthcare is NOT a natural, inherent, inalienable/unalienable right.

1. In the US we find some way to pay for what we find important. The examples are myriad, but of late one could look at the assorted bailouts and the war in Iraq as examples. The cash isn't there for either of those examples and it never will be, nor will it be repayed, nonetheless, we got 'em both.

B. The US wastes billions monthly on inefficient and greed-driven ineffective health care. Were it to be re-aligned quality healthcare could be afforded to all. When the poor need healthcare they go the E.R. Who pays? If they are MA eligible the govt picks up the tab. If they are not and don't pay then you and I absorb it through higher costs in our hospital and doctors bills. MA, of course, doesn't actually cover the true cost of services so the ER has to pick up that overage and pass it on to you and me again. Hospital Administrators and Doctors alike, in large number, are coming to support some single-payer type system.

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 47 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.

This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.

http://www.pnhp.org/

Costs aside, IMHO comparing RKBA and Healthcare to one another is good in rhetoric, unfeasible in practice. They are not the same creature. If they would be, Jody, I'm afraid I do not see that you have made your case that health care is not a right as much as RKBA. Ultimately, RKBA is about defense of life. Same so with healthcare.