"Free healthcare isn't a human right! Nothing is free! Who's going to pay the doctors?" Every human being has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Self-evident right? Freedom isn't free, sure, but the military is 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘹𝘦𝘴!!! Healthcare should be the same.
I'm not even getting into what the "pursuit of happiness" means here, but our Founding Fathers thought it was an absolutely foundational human right. I'm pretty sure education is important in the pursuit of happiness. In any case, if you want your society to function well, education is essential.
"But public education is terrible! And if we get public healthcare, that'll be terrible too!" The important point to make here is that rich people should have the 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 access to education and healthcare as poor people. If that happens, it'll be good because the rich will make sure of it.
The views I'm expressing here sound like socialism or even communism, right? Could be, but these are such quintessentially 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 ideas that they're in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence! Love it or leave it, bud. 🇺🇸 www.archives.gov/founding-doc...
Happiness can only occur atop a gigantic pile of money and corpses. If we do not allow such accumulations we have effectively outlawed happiness and its pursuit.
My dad—physician for 50 years, well-off thanks to that—got the whole point. In a decent society, you WANT healthy people, so the government should pay the goddamn doctors. In a decent society, you WANT excellent doctors, so the government should pay for their goddamn education. Not hard math.
I’m so sorry; your dad deserved better. And: “who is going to pay the doctors” assumes that somehow the tax money covering our healthcare isn’t “paying doctors.” It is indicative of using “free” as a sliding signifier for whatever idea makes your point in the moment without regard to the whole.
That's nice of you to say, and I agree with you in that all human beings deserve decent healthcare, but my dad was a right-winger, so this whole mess is partly on him. I don't see how somebody could be in debt their whole life with a disabled kid and still be conservative, but you know, it's a cult.