Thread: Rand Paul: Right to Health Care is Slavery

A bit dramatic, but I get his point. While you are not forced to become a doctor, if you do choose to become one, the govt will eventually be your employer and regulate everything about your job. I can imagine a time when they will choose what kind of doctor you can become, and where you will work.

Not to mention the govt forcing customers to buy health care and determine what and when they can get. It is more fasicism than slavery.

“With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care you have to realize what that implies. I am a physician. You have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. You are going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants, the nurses. … You are basically saying you believe in slavery,”

“Our founding documents said you have a right to pursue happiness, but there’s no guarantee about physical comfort. When you say you have a ‘right’ to something there is an implication of force. ... I will always treat people who come into the ER because that is what we always have done and because I believe in the Hippocratic Oath.”

Read more: Rand Paul: 'Right to health care' is slavery - Kate Nocera - POLITICO.com

Originally Posted by jviehe

A bit dramatic, but I get his point. While you are not forced to become a doctor, if you do choose to become one, the govt will eventually be your employer and regulate everything about your job. I can imagine a time when they will choose what kind of doctor you can become, and where you will work.

Not to mention the govt forcing customers to buy health care and determine what and when they can get. It is more fasicism than slavery.

Rand Paul has never had a legitimate point about anything. He just spews bumper sticker logic, childish rhetoric and half baked economic theories; demonstrating a somewhat modest intellectual endowment. He must be a real disappointment to dear old dad.

Originally Posted by jviehe

I can imagine a time when they will choose what kind of doctor you can become, and where you will work.

I can't back that assumption. The only thing I see the government forcing is that you provide care for anyone who shows up at your place of business. Incentives for going into a specific field or working in a given area would make sense though.

Not to mention the govt forcing customers to buy health care and determine what and when they can get. It is more fasicism than slavery.

This, I very much agree with. I support paying for healthcare from the tax roles, but forcing people to make an individual purchase is not acceptable in my book.

Originally Posted by jviehe

A bit dramatic, but I get his point. While you are not forced to become a doctor, if you do choose to become one, the govt will eventually be your employer and regulate everything about your job. I can imagine a time when they will choose what kind of doctor you can become, and where you will work.

Not to mention the govt forcing customers to buy health care and determine what and when they can get. It is more fasicism than slavery.

Using Ron's line of thinking, the selective service and military draft would have indulged in slavery. Odd how time changes the way we think about shit.

Originally Posted by jviehe

A bit dramatic, but I get his point. While you are not forced to become a doctor, if you do choose to become one, the govt will eventually be your employer and regulate everything about your job. I can imagine a time when they will choose what kind of doctor you can become, and where you will work.

Not to mention the govt forcing customers to buy health care and determine what and when they can get. It is more fasicism than slavery.

The same non-problem is faced by people who want to be teachers or cops, or for that matter, nuclear engineers. The socialization of the economy has been happening everywhere for over a century. It isn't driven by political ideology but by the economics of new technology. Longing for the good old days is a waste of time. We need to be thinking about how to create the future we want to have.

Originally Posted by Porras

I can't back that assumption. The only thing I see the government forcing is that you provide care for anyone who shows up at your place of business. Incentives for going into a specific field or working in a given area would make sense though.



This, I very much agree with. I support paying for healthcare from the tax roles, but forcing people to make an individual purchase is not acceptable in my book.

They already heavily regulate schools. Why wouldnt they set quotas for handing out licenses? And then use salary funding to control how many positions there are. Its actually similar to how the market system works, except theres no room for innovation.

I'm not saying it couldn't happen, just that I don't anticipate it happening. Since they can't legally force someone to remain in their field without a contract which would be temporary, the doctors would ultimately control their personal situation as they do now.

Originally Posted by jviehe

A bit dramatic, but I get his point. While you are not forced to become a doctor, if you do choose to become one, the govt will eventually be your employer and regulate everything about your job. I can imagine a time when they will choose what kind of doctor you can become, and where you will work.

Not to mention the govt forcing customers to buy health care and determine what and when they can get. It is more fasicism than slavery.

Any point Rand Paul was trying to make got lost to the typical extremism rhetoric making the rest of us question the integrity of the statement. That "fear" factor portion of the statement clouds whatever stance Paul may have on his own views (assuming he has a plan) for reparing the issues we have with healthcare pre or post Obamacare implementation. While there may be real issues with a move from present conditions to socialized medicine that does not equate to slavery. You are correct in that it is more fascism than slavery to force someone to purchase something that is very much regulated but in all seriousness this is not the first trip down this road. At the state level we've already seen product you must purchased, very much regulated, just to drive a car. Right or wrong, this already exists in part. Personally I think this is all just positioning and typical partisan grandstanding anyway all in wait of a Supreme Court decision on challenges to Obamacare.

Originally Posted by Sluggo

Any point Rand Paul was trying to make got lost to the typical extremism rhetoric making the rest of us question the integrity of the statement. That "fear" factor portion of the statement clouds whatever stance Paul may have on his own views (assuming he has a plan) for reparing the issues we have with healthcare pre or post Obamacare implementation. While there may be real issues with a move from present conditions to socialized medicine that does not equate to slavery. You are correct in that it is more fascism than slavery to force someone to purchase something that is very much regulated but in all seriousness this is not the first trip down this road. At the state level we've already seen product you must purchased, very much regulated, just to drive a car. Right or wrong, this already exists in part. Personally I think this is all just positioning and typical partisan grandstanding anyway all in wait of a Supreme Court decision on challenges to Obamacare.

But as has been said many times, you dont have to have a car, you dont have to have insurance if you drive your car on your property, and you dont have to buy insurance neccesarily, just be able to pay for hurting someone else with your car. In florida you can purchase a bond instead. And its the state, which has far more powers than the federal govt, and you can always move to another state. Yes, its an extreme analogy, but the substance is still valid. Hes saying that federal healthcare removes a doctors freedom to practice.

Originally Posted by Sluggo

... Personally I think this is all just positioning and typical partisan grandstanding anyway all in wait of a Supreme Court decision on challenges to Obamacare.

It seems likely that the Supremes will wait to see how the 2012 elections turn out before ruling on health insurance reform.

I can't predict how they will rule, but I do know this: our current system is falling apart and, as the Ryan budget fiasco demonstrates, voters want it fixed. And by fixed, they mean more safety net, not less.

If conservative dreams come true and the Supremes toss out the entire package, the country is not going to walk away and forget about being able to afford medical care. On the contrary, we will get "Medicare for All" a tax-supported single-payer government program essentially like Canada's.

No advanced democracy has ever abandoned the modern welfare state and there is not the slightest evidence that American voters wish to do so now. The conservatives in Congress are setting themselves up for a major snap-back by attempting to destroy rather than contain the inevitable.