The Redhunter

"But Britain does have the dirtiest, most broken-down hospitals in Europe."

Evidently Mr. Dalyrymple (or Anthony Daniels) hasn't been to a hospital in Slovakia. I had the unfortunate experience of recently going to a hospital there:
1. The plastic examining table was sprayed with something after the patient before me, adding to the thick film of whatever disinfectant it was.
2. The doctor used an old fashioned manual typewriter to peck out my prognosis and used a razor blade to cut open my knee.

Why would we model our reform after the British, when the Dutch and Taiwanese have done a much better job at providing universal coverage?

I would wager that the UK has much better hospitals than those found in Slovakia, or most other eastern European countries. Everything in there felt like it was from the early 1970s.
As a side note, my wife just went to the hospital here in Bangkok, and it was super modern. The X-rays were emailed to her doctor within five minutes, and the buildings were very modern. We both paid about $100 out-of-pocket, but her service and the quality here in Bangkok was much better.

I agree health care isn't a right, but our system is one of the most expensive and but not the most efficient. We spend the most per capita, but don't get the best service. Taiwan has very interesting system that provides good universal care to its people. It is ironic that American nationalists are so willing to engage in military brinkmanship with China to defend Taiwan (a country with socialized medicine).

Just because a right is an imagined one, doesn't reduce its validity. All rights are abstract creations at the end of the day - our hunter gather ancestors had no conception of freedom of speech, or of the Fifth Amendment. But that doesn't make these concepts any less useful or valid to us now.

I think what Dalrymple is driving at is the difference between positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty is simply the guarantee that the state will not do bad things to you. Positive liberty includes rights to things that society considers fundamental - like a basic education, healthcare and even, yes, food. Might you not agree, Tom, that we all want to live in a society where nobody, even the terminally lazy, starves to death? That food is cheap enough stuff in the industrialised world, that either through government programs or Christian charity we can afford to give it to those who need it?

At the end of the day this is why healthcare is free in the UK. After WWII, the British people elected a government with an overwhelming mandate to set up socialised healthcare, and to this day the NHS is so popular among voters that no political party would dare suggest abolishing it. Society decided that free healthcare was a right, and now it is. What's wrong with that?

And what about common defence? You might equally think of it as socialised defence. We expect our governments to protect us against foreign armies or terrorist attacks, because it's more efficient than telling each citizen to take out private insurance - or to contract out the service to a private militia. Unless you're a radical libertarian, my guess is you'd feel safer knowing the US military had your back than you would paying a monthly fee to Blackwater Corp. So if it's more effective to protect society against, say, cancer, through socialised healthcare than through a confusing and exploitative private insurance system, than why not do it? Why is cancer any less of a threat than military attack?

jason - I'm glad you survived your ordeal. Yes, one of the hazards of traveling to non-Western nations is the substandard medical care. I must have missed that post on your blog.

All - Just so we're all clear, I do not doubt that our current system needs to be changed. I just don't want to go in the direction Obama wants to take it.

Mr. Daylrymple said "When I then ask my interlocutor whether he can think of any reason why people should not be left to die in the street, other than that they have a right to health care, he is generally reduced to silence. He cannot think of one".
 
Goodness, I can think of one:  One reason is so we don't become a third world country. 
 
In Mexico City, for example, in one of the nicest districts, I saw a woman fall in a seizure.  She was light-skinned, well-dressed, carrying shopping bags from the nicest stores.  No one helped her.  Some literally stepped over her.  When I asked our hired chauffeur to stop and help her, and I exclaimed "why is no one helping her?" he said that people in his country never want to get involved.  He drove on, totally unconcerned.
 
When blacks in certain states before the civil rights laws were passed, got in a car accident, etc. no ambulances would pick them up, no hospital would take them. They literally died in the streets. In the Southwest, Natives and dark-skinned Mexicans (those with Indian blood) were denied care too then.
 
Third world countries and some European and East European countries are not only "the most unpleasant to be ill", they are not pleasant for other reasons. They are nice to visit for their history, then we are so glad to come home where there is efficiency and good quality to be had, even for our poorest. 
 
In Spain, even the Duchess of Alba doesn't have a toilet that works, in Israel tourists complain that their toilet paper has wood splinters, well-dressed matrons in Italy often have to go down to the street to get water because the water pressure was nil in their apartments (in a nice district), people there flock to outdoor cafes and bars in summer and winter because of the poor heating or lack of air-conditioning in their homes. Same thing in Mexico.  Only the rich can live well (well some of the time) in third world or some Western countries. 
 
Dalrymple also said, "There is no right to health care--any more than there is a right to Chicken Kiev every second Thursday of the month."  Goodness, I can't think of a more heartless statement.  Treatment to prevent permanent injury or death is not a luxury to be compared to Chicken Kiev or Filet Mignon, etc.  I think it is a right to expect a community to care for its citizens.
 
Yes, in practice some of the things FDR proposed have come to be maybe because once we were free from the abuses of the English monarchy that the Constitution addressed, we could become our own free caring people and progress to be the best country in the world. 

The point about the Chicken Kiev is one I've made myself, but I used "LCD high definition TV"

Where do rights come from? Are they just whatever we say they are at any given moment? If you say "it makes us a better society" or "more caring" or "prevents poverty" then going from health care or coverage to Chicken Kiev or an LCD TV is only a matter of incremental steps, not of substance. Once you say that health care or coverage is a right, they you go on to say that a job is a right, then a car, then entertainment - as who can lead a happy fulfilled life without entertainment and good food?

It's one thing to say we have a natural law right to free speech. As discussed above, these are "rights from government interference." No one gets billed, and it's simply a matter of the government letting you alone or acting in some prescribed manner should you be brought to trial.

A "right to health care" or "health insurance coverage" is something else entirely. They require a proactive stance by government, complete with funding. So you have to tax A to provide B, and worse, B has a right to A's money! This is a path to legalized confiscation of property, which is where we seem to be headed.