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Sitara

I say yes. Healthcare is a basic right. I will never understand why so many prolifers are not actually prolife by supporting a born person's right to live. Not only would single payer save lives, it would save money too, but conservatives just don't care.

MayCaesar

1. There is zero evidence suggesting that single-payer healthcare "saves money", and the economical sciences are pretty clear on the consensus that public-funded services are inherently less cost-efficient. Single-payer healthcare can be more cost-efficient than monopolized/oligopolized healthcare, but comparing two extremes hardly exhausts the subject.

2. Healthcare is not a basic right, and it would not make much sense to suggest otherwise. Having right on being guaranteed a service, rather than having a right on being able to use a service, is not in line with the concept of human rights as viewed both legally and philosophically in the dominant Western school of thought.

3. Single-payer healthcare has shown to be much worse at saving human lives, than private enterprises, especially in the times of crises, when the heavy governmental bureaucracy and accountability led to unacceptable delays of the arriving aid, while private-funded endeavors were extremely quick and efficient. The Haiti post-earthquake crisis is the best demonstration of this trend, where the charity funds achieved a much higher performance, than the heavy governmental assistance package that failed due to corruption and incompetence.

4. Not only "pro-file" (read "anti-abortion") people do not support single player healthcare. Libertarians do not either, for example, while simultaneously supporting the principle of bodily autonomy. In fact, one could argue that the concept of bodily autonomy necessarily contradicts the principle of the public healthcare. So those who both support the abortions and single-payer healthcare are just as inconsistent, as those who do not support either the abortions or the single-payer healthcare.

Clinton's famous "It's the economy, stupid" is a good principle to go by here. I understand the moral arguments in support of the single-payer healthcare, but the world does not abide by moral principles; it abides by the laws of physics, and those laws dictate that in a complex system with many degrees of freedom centralized entities cannot function efficiently. If you believe that sacrifice of efficiency is worth giving some guarantees to the poor, then that is consistent, albeit questionable from many moral viewpoints; however, if you believe that the efficiency itself is improved by moving to a unitary federal healthcare system, then you are either wrong, or you know something that no one else does, some fundamental element of human behavior that so far has eluded science.

That is not to say that single-payer healthcare cannot be efficient in a strongly centralized nation; it did work in Germany in 1933-1945 pretty well, for example, far outshining the achievements of the private healthcare in the same system at the same period of time. However, it would not be a great system to emulate, now would it?

Sitara

@MayCaesar Yes healthcare is a right. This is my body, I have the right to live.

Ampersand

Yes. If you actually look at the reasoning and evidence, there's pretty much no reason to support the existing multipayer system.

Morality

If you were sick or hurt, would you want medical care regardless of your situation, even if you are poor? Yes, you would.

On this basis the Golden Rule, which is essentially "Treat others as you would be treated" would support that we should help others get medical care under all circumstances and should put a system in place that delivers such.

This is important because the Golden Rule is perhaps the closest thing we have to a common ethical guideline. It isn't just the Bible where statements like "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18) are made. Hindu texts from centuries BC state: "May the guest be your god. Those actions that are uncensurable, do such, none else. Those that to us are good acts, they should be performed, none else". Even more philisophical streams of thought incorporate it such as the Confucism teaching of: 'Zi Gong asked, saying, "Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not RECIPROCITY such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."'

As stated in the initial link: "[The Golden Rule] dates at least to the early Confucian times (551–479 BCE) according to Rushworth Kidder, who identifies that this concept appears prominently in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and "the rest of the world's major religions"" and '143 leaders encompassing the world's major faiths endorsed the Golden Rule as part of the 1993 "Declaration Toward a Global Ethic"'

In short though morality is vastly varied, the above moral perspective is one of the most universal and unanimous guides to moral action. In this situation the moral guidance would dictate a single payer health system or another form of health which delivers the best possible care to all.

Our Rights

That you have the right to health is an undeniable basic fact recognised globally and pretty much unanimously.

As well as the more general Right to Life which is often interpreted as including a right to health, a specific health to live is included in a massive amount of international documents detailing human rights from the UN Decleration of Human Rights where Article 25 specifies a right to health, medical care and social services to the less famous International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural rights which is nevertherless accepted by 169 countries representing pretty much the entire global population that says:

"1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

2. The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for:

(a) The provision for the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child;

(b) The improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene;

(c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases;

(d) The creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness."

It seems obvious that people should have a right to healthcare because our health is a fundamental issue that effects our lives and is easily capable of causing the same kind of misery (or worse) as losing the right to free speech religious freedom. In fact that it's so obviously important is why it is one of our fundamental rights. Now that doesn't state single-payer healthcare specifically - but it does mean that there needs to be full healthcare provision across the entire population regardless of how much people can afford to pay out - which in effect does mean either single payer or something functionally identical in most respects.

Private Sector Inefficiency

The private sector is a bloated mess in many areas of the economy and healthcare is a prime example and a basic fact for anyone knowledgeable about healthcare. By pretty much every set of figures from independent expert evaluations to official government figures, private healthcare insurance has massively more administration overheads - a common figure cited being "Private insurers’ overhead currently averages 12.0%,as compared with only 2.1% for fee‐for‐ service Medicare." This is because "The complexity of reimbursement systems also forces physicians and hospitals to waste substantial resources on documentation, billing and collections. As a result, U.S. health care administration costs are about double those in Canada, where the single‐payer system pays hospitals global budgets and physicians via simplified fee schedules. Reducing U.S. administrative costs to Canadian levels would save over $400 billion annually"

The argument is pretty clear cut that single payer results in massive efficiency savings that to consolidating things under a single administration rather than 300 redundantly competing beurachracies, not to mention saving the massive amounts of money  currently wasted on trying to make sure you buy insurance from company A rather than Company B based on the strength of their advertising jingle or how cool their youtube video is rather than any difference in quality of coverage; or trying to make physicians buy branded drugs rather than the much cheaper and exactly identical even down to the molecular level generic drugs.

This is why even right-wing think tanks funded by the Kock Brothers that are doing their best to advocate for free-market options, etc have had to admit that implementing Single Payer healthcare in the USA would save trillions of dollars and yes that's TRILLIONS of dollars with a 't'.

MayCaesar said:

words

These kind of empty ideological arguments are the only real defence anyone is likely to put forward for a private healthcare system - a series of empty claims without a single iota of evidence to support them because a person would rather hold to ideological fairy tales than look at reality.

Sitara

@Ampersand You said it much better than I can. Where did you learn all of this?