I have noticed a trend on Facebook of people putting the following in their status: Facebook user: thinks that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
I have made comments on some of these posters, but would like to start a status that says “I think that health care is not a right” but think that more should be said than just that.
Ideas anyone?
Direct them to the FIRM website. This is my favorite page to link to.
I don’t know how much you are allowed to write in that facebook thing, but how about:
No bureaucrat knows what I want or the means for me to achieve it. Therefore any rules they set will necessarily only be detrimental to my achievement of my goals. I know what I want, and you don’t. If you think you do, then you are saying you know something that you obviously do not. Do you disagree?
If it is wrong for one person to enslave another, it is wrong for one person to enslave another even if one person calls himself “an uninsured person.” If it is wrong for one person to steal from another, it is wrong for one person to steal from another even if one person calls himself an “a person who needs health care.” If not, all I need to do to enslave you, and steal your property is declare myself a “Health Care Reform Supporter” and suddenly it all becomes okay. Do you disagree?
Or go with the AR quote: Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others—misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement—failure is not a mortgage on success—suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence—man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause—life is not one huge hospital. Do you disagree? If so, gtfo my page.
Or something like that.
Socialism = death
Capitalism = life
Any questions?
That’s enough to get the point across.
A high school friend posted that:
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day. Demand access to quality, affordable health care.
I responded thusly:
No man’s need, no matter how great, legitimates theft. No degree of democratic majority, even a unanimous one, legitimates the violation of individual rights. Demand a return to Constitutional principles – uphold your rights to life liberty, property, and the pursuit of your own happiness. Just had to get in my two cents, exercising my right to free speech (which I hope the majority allows me to keep, though in the long run I doubt it).
–Dan Edge
My reply to a friend:
“Nice sentiment, but the question behind it is: who is going pay for their healthcare and how? When we start thinking that responsibility for something should be collective, we are inviting Big Brother goverments.”
I decided to go with the argument of the absurd today:
If the solution to the health care crisis is insure everyone, who’s going to profit the most? Where will that insurance money end up? Hospitals, Doctors and Pharmaceutical companies (those EEEEVIL money grubbing drug companies!!!) are going to… make an awful lot of money off of this every emotionally driven movement. Profiting off of people being sick?? That’s just wrong! Lets regulate health care *pricing* too!
The dialog so far:
Chuck
If the solution to the health care crisis is insure everyone, who’s going to profit the most? Where will that insurance money end up? Hospitals, Doctors and Pharmaceutical companies (those EEEEVIL money grubbing drug companies!!!) are going to… make an awful lot of money off of this every emotionally driven movement. Profiting off of people being sick?? That’s just wrong! Lets regulate health care *pricing* too!Read More
2 hours ago · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (11)Hide Feedback (11)
Johanna likes this.
Gary G
Pull the plug. Living free isn’t cheap but it is better than a Nanny State.
Chuck
No see, if the idea is that the wealthy should pay for the insurance, then make the rich who are RESPONSIBLE for high health care pay. Take the money from the hospitals, the drug companies, and the doctors who’ve been charging an arm and a leg (no pun intended) for health care for all these years! It’s their fault people can’t afford health care, so don’t let them profit from it anymore!
2 hours ago · Delete
Gary G
Easy Robin Hood! If you think your Doctor charges too much, then get a new one. Besides, it always starts with the Rich and ends up with what’s left of the Middle Class.
2 hours ago · Delete
Dave W
How about we blame our sue-happy society for driving up malpractice insurance? And btw, if you clamp down on doctors fees, how many people are going to pay the megabucks to go through medical school?
Chuck
Oh, hey, that’s easy. We regulate school prices too! If healthcare is a basic human right, then getting the education necessary to PROVIDE that right should be a basic right as well!
Lance W
Well, in some ways we have clamped down on how much a doctor can charge for a certian procedure, it’s set by Medicaid/Medicare.
Two of the more major issues that have driven medical costs up have been, as Dave said, Malpractive and the government’s involvement with tax incentives for business that helped drive the creation of HMO’s. If you look … Read Moreat when medical costs started getting out of hand, it was when the government started offering businesses breaks to give their employees insurance.
I’ve worked for hospitals, doctor offices and a large BC/BS Insurance agency. And I have to see the largest amount of waste that I saw was on the insurance side. They were trying to develop a new system to handle billing of employers for their employees’ insurance. This was the 3rd time they had tried doing this. When I left, they were at least a year behind schedule, at least $20 million over budget and only had about 20% of it done (of which most of it didn’t work).
Chuck
Sure, Lance - no argument - but if we regulate how much Doc’s and Hospitals can make, who needs insurance?? The entire industry goes away. And if the doc’s and hospitals are broke cause they have to give dirt cheap care, who’s gonna sue em? You don’t sue broke people!
19 minutes ago · Delete
Lance W
I totally agree. That and give our Congressment dormatories to live in while they are in DC. No more huge housing allowance.
We often talk about it in healthcare, the difference between the doctors who get into it because they care and want to do good and those that are in it purely for the money. The level of care provide is SOOOOOO different.
15 minutes ago · Delete
Lance W
But another side of the regulation, when HMO’s came into existance and we started regulating how much the doctor’s got paid, they started “making sure” they could billing for every little detail. An attitude of, well, if I can’t bill what I want, I WILL make sure I bill for every little detail of it.
Malpractice plays into that as well. Look at how many tests are run, not because they Dr needs to know, but to for CYA reasons.
12 minutes ago · Delete
Chuck
Oh, no no no - it’s not the Politicians fault! Don’t punish those who aren’t responsible. They TRY to do the right thing, but it’s impossible with all those special interest groups (insurance co’s, health coalitions, drug co’s) sending them all that $ to vote their way. What can a poor politician do, after all?
12 minutes ago · Delete
I have noticed a trend on Facebook of people putting the following in their status: Facebook user: thinks that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
Depending on what you want to do on FaceBook, I would seriously consider de-friending them at some point if they don’t get it – if they are altruists to the core – unless you think they are honestly mistaken.
My reply would be: “What moral requirement makes me the servant of those who are sick or injured? I have no such moral obligation. I prefer John Galt’s assessment: ‘I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine.’”
That will at least get the topic going in the right direction, because they are counting on your altruism to say, sure I don’t think anyone should suffer the consequences of being sick or injured. They are proposing an injustice and immoral action against those who are not sick or injured – the immoral action being the initiation of force to make them pay for other people’s problems.
Someone else posted this as their status:
“I will not have a lien upon my life because someone else might die, and I should not have to work for the sick just because they are broke. No one else is entitled to their health at the expense of my well-being. If you should get your so-called free… health care, know that someone was forced to pay for it. The portion that came from me was taken against my will, and your ‘noble gesture’ was theft.”
Another decent one: “No one is his brother’s keeper–or healer. If we are forced to keep our brother, we’ll all be kept by Big Brother.”
Great replies!
Some of these people are not actually “friends”, but people I play a game with on facebook. I have them in a separate “friend list” where they have no access to any personal information, just my status and a few of my pictures. I use this as a small form of activism also. Who knows when a seed might be planted by one of my status or link postings?
I think I will use some form of what brian0918 posted for a few days!
Facebook user: thinks that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
I posted yesterday:
Facebook user: thinks that no one should die because they cannot afford *your* health care, and no one should go broke because *you* get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
exercising my right to free speech (which I hope the majority allows me to keep, though in the long run I doubt it).
Facebook is owned and operated by a private corporation. You have no intrinsic right to free speech within their domain.
I thought this was just my silly second cousin. I gave an argument against it, then got jumped on by her friend, but after a few replies each her friend quit the conversation after calling me a big meanie who hates my fellow man. And then 2 of my other cousins copied the original message… :dough:
This was my status update yesterday: “No one should die because of zombies if they cannot afford a shotgun, or even just a machete, and no one should be turned into a vampire if they get bit by one–or a werewolf for that matter. If you agree, post this as your status for the rest of the day.”
I didn’t make that up myself (I copied and reposted it from another friend). Not sure if I’d consider it the most Objectivist/philosophical response, but it’s a response nonetheless…
No one should have money extorted from them at the point of a gun simply because others are in need, and no one should consider anything which must be created by human effort a universal right. If you agree, please consider posting this as your status for the rest of the day.
That’s what I’ve got up today… copied from West and NickS