@Jazzhead Folks can plan to provide themselves with food, shelter and clothing. The cost of an unexpected health crisis? Not so much. That's why most responsible folks turn to insurance, just as they do when what's at stake is the protection of their home against fire or flood, or their life savings against a lawsuit in the event of an auto accident.
With all due respect, this seems contradictory. You first claim that health care is different from food, shelter, and clothing, because we cannot plan for unexpected health care costs. But you then (rightly) note the existence of the insurance market, which means we
can plan for those unexpected costs. So I'm not understanding the distinction you're drawing between the government providing food, shelter, and clothing, and the government providing health care.
Is protection against ruin in the event of medical catastrophe a "right"? No, but the members of a community can decide -as we've done with Social Security - to devise a system by which such risks can be spread among the community at large. As I've mentioned before, I apply a Rawlesian analysis to a matter such as this - if you were ignorant of your circumstance - wealth or poverty, health or sickness - is this the sort of risk you'd agree should be spread among the community at large so that an individual can have peace of mind against the ill winds of arbitrary fate?
I think there are a lot of problems with Rawls and his Veil of Ignorance, but if you're going in that direction, then government
also should provide food, shelter, and clothing -- again, according to Rawls. And you haven't distinguished how professional health care is any
more necessary to life than food, shelter, and clothing (it's clearly even
less necessary), or why government should provide that to everyone but not the others.
As you've pointed out, Bill, we must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it could be. We cannot be selfish islands of individuality without a care for the larger community.
Actually, we
can be. What is becoming very clear is that we
cannot -- in the literal sense -- provide everyone with all the basics they need to live -- food, shelter, and clothing --
plus health care. We are collapsing under the weight of providing much less only to limited segments of society, and it is not sustainable in the long term. Honestly, your plea that we must deal with the world "as it is" rather than "as we wish it could be" seems a very odd point for you to make. You're talking about something that is
desireable in a moral sense without first establishing that it is even
possible to do it in the long-term. I'd suggest that your position may be the one that is dealing with the world as he wishes it to be, rather than what it really is.