So, some guy recommended me some youtube channel by some libertarian who loves to crap on anti establishment lefties, particularly Kyle Kulinski, specifically in regard to takes about whether the democrats rig their primaries. I won't go into that because his takes are so laughably surface level that I feel my existing content does a decent job explaining exactly what I mean when I talk about rigging primaries. And yeah, the guy is some massive edgelord who thinks he's doing these 140 IQ takes, when not really, he just comes off an abrasive, smarmy neolib.
Anyway, going deeper into his channel I kinda realized that he's not a neolib, but a right libertarian who possibly shifted to some form of enlightened centrism or neoliberalism, which explains why I can see his fedora and smell his BO through my computer screen. I won't link the guy's content because I don't think it's really worth sharing, but he did give me some ammo for writing some articles on stuff. And on one video he went all into why healthcare isnt a right, and how it doesnt change the "economic realities" of the situation, and blah blah blah.
Now, he makes some okayish arguments here, hence why I'm writing an article here, and since i dont wanna link his content, I'll explain here. Basically, he points out how Bernie Sanders blustering about healthcare as a right doesnt solve the issues of scarcity, and how we dont suddenly have infinite productive resources when we declare something is a right. He discusses how single payer healthcare systems have problems with scarcity, and this leads to rationing of resources, and how good old free market healthcare is better.
Now, honestly, this is why i get irritated by this guy's takes, but when a lot of people hear this, they think, wow, he's so insightful, he totally owned those lefties. Uh...no, not really. As I like to say all the time, we ration healthcare in the US too. The difference is, we ration it by ability to pay. If you dont have money, you don't get care, period. You can screw off and die. And people regularly end up with massive medical debt, even with insurance, because healthcare is so unaffordable. These realities are why I'm medicare for all in the first place. Healthcare is such a broken market in the US, that the only way I can see it being fixed is if the US steps in and becomes the insurer. The debate for me, is whether it should be the insurer of last resort, like via a public option model (medicare extra for all), or via a full on single payer system. I like single payer better ideally, but I recognize given the other financial commitments I want to fund, a public option would be easier. So there is some debate there. But what I don't support is free market healthcare. Healthcare should be a right, period.
Now, when I say it should be a right, what do I mean? This is where you get libertarian edgelords coming in. For the libertarian right, they get their ideas from locke, who believed in natural rights. They believed that rights exist outside of government, and are found in nature, through natural revelation. Many natural rights theorists, given the right's mentality and weird wedding of conservative ideas with christianity, may even believe natural rights theory carries the force of divine command theory, and that god granted these rights by divine fiat. I believe this is a childish fiction.
I'm not really a huge fan of natural rights theory. It seems to have a little too much divine command theory in it, and I dont think any ethics are really inherent to our nature. I mean, sure, I do believe that we should try to improve human life and quality of life while having a minimal impact on our liberty, but honestly, most rights are merely social constructs we devised in order to make human life better. The constitution enshrines within it a "bill of rights" guaranteeing things like a right to free speech, privacy, a fair trial, protections against cruel and unusual punishment, etc. These arent things that just exist in nature, they are the products of millennia of trial and error and we found that in the 1700s, these things improved peoples lives.
The difference is, unlike the right, who still lived by the moral frameworks of those who lived in the 1700s, LITERALLY, for us "progressives", the concept of progress never stopped. For the right, society peaked in the past and any changes since then are bad and evil and should be undone. So they romanticize the past and their versions of its ideals, and want to go back to a "simpler time" in which things were simple and society was ran their way. The problem is, most of the time, most progress is good, and these guys still find themselves arguing against the most basic progressive protections of people in the realm of economics. I mean, I literally had a debate with some conservative tonight going on about how FDR prolonged the depression and was one of the worst presidents we ever had. This guy presumably wants to live in a world in which we worked 80 hours a week, had our heads bashed in by pinkertons for daring to suggest that we should be treated and paid fairly at work, and that we can all just screw off and die when we're no longer productive enough to sustain ourselves. I mean, that does seem to be the future (or past, since im describing the 19th century) that the right wants, at least in my estimation. It's also why I've stopped being a right winger. I kinda realized that that's a horrifying vision for how to run things.
Anyway, since then, we've tried to extend further government protections and guarantees into the economic realm. FDR had his "economic bill of rights" in the 1940s, wanting to guarantee stuff like a job, healthcare, education, etc., and it's the blueprint the modern left, including Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson, seem to base their ideas off of, for better or for worse (yeah...not a fan of a right to a job for various reasons, better to give a right to income).
Basically, if we want to try to guarantee certain services to individuals as part of the social contract, we can do that. This isn't to say that these suddenly resolve the issues of scarcity. We can only provide such things as well as our economic means to do so allows. And before some right winger goes on about how such a right forces healthcare workers into slavery, those economic means include willingness to work in those fields.
As such, as we transition from a mostly free market system to a public healthcare system, I'm not saying there won't be some issues. We might have issues with scarcity. Demand could go up as healthcare is free, we might have to ration. But remember what I always said, we already do ration. Markets effectively ration, and what these right libertarians want is for the markets to ration everything for better or for worse, even if some are excluded. Basically, those who want healthcare to be a right, don't want people excluded.
So what do we do when we have to ration healthcare? Well, most public healthcare systems do so based on need. If youre really sick, you get emergency care. If you're having a heart attack, you go to the hospital and they treat you IMMEDIATELY as they're able. Heck, that's one of the reasons we shut down the economy during COVID, we were worried that if COVID spread too fast, that it would overwhelm our healthcare system's productive capacities and people would die. See, even market healthcare doesn't avoid these economic realities, no matter how much better libertarians claim they are. If you cant keep up with demand, you run out, and people die. The real question is, what's the best way to do a healthcare system. Should we live it up to the market where those who dont or cant pay die, or have a public system where everyone is guaranteed equal access to the system and people get healthcare based on need? A lot of the rationing you hear about in these other countries come down to people who have non life threatening afflictions who have to wait months or years to get help they need. The problem is, people in the US often wait months or years to get the care they need too. Especially if they don't have insurance. They might NEVER get help. You see, in the US, yes, people who CAN AFFORD TO PAY get faster and better quality of care. But that comes at the expense of others getting poor care or no care at all. The US has two healthcare systems. For the top half of the population it's the best in the world full stop. For everyone else, it borders on what you'd expect in third world countries. Because if you can't afford care, you're excluded.
So when lefties say something is a right, we're just trying to guarantee equal access to a service based on something other than the free market. We are basically saying the government should step up and take a much larger role in either heavily intervening in the market to get what I like to call a "human centered" outcome, or the government just runs that industry more directly in more serious cases of market failure.
If you disagree with how we do it, fine. I know where I stand, and I think rationing healthcare based on severity of one's needs is more fair than doing it based on whether you have enough money or not. Because in my opinion, the free market has proven itself to be completely unable to meet the needs of a significant portion of the population affordably, leading to rationing to be done based on income and social status, rather than need.
So let's get all of this edgelord bullcrap out about how hurr durr you cant guarantee healthcare as a right, imagine 4 people on an island. No. No rights are natural, all rights are social conventions, and quite frankly, progressives simply have more advanced moral compasses than people who are stuck in the morals of 200+ years ago. And that's my honest take on this subject.
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