Some folks have a rehearsed diatribe that healthcare is not a human right because it entitles you to the labors of other people "which is slavery!" (those people would be getting paid, just like the armed forces and the police--guess we'd better disband those?).

...

The folly is in the convenient slogan "healthcare is a human right". Maybe it's not, but then neither are paved roads or libraries or the EPA or the USDA or or public education.
But these are services many of us agree we'd like our taxes to go into, and if you don't use em fine.

I personally have not been to a library in years, I also have no children to enroll in school. But I'm not about to scream about the unfair slavery my taxes are enforcing by these services existing.

(Because that's insane.)

I'm more bugged about trillion dollar bailouts to private companies and untaxed billions going to megachurch pyramid schemes than I am about the kids of my neighborhood being sent to a school staffed by teachers paid with taxes.

So healthcare isn't a human right. We should stop saying that it is. That's ultimately not what matters.

It's a thing that many of us want, and a thing that many of us would be just as comfortable with our taxes paying for as our schools and infrastructure.

It's something that many of us would PREFER our taxes to provide over an infinite military budget.

I sort of wish every person when filing their W2's also submitted a sheet of how they would like their taxes to be spent, and then that would determine how things are budgeted.

It would just be a checklist.
If you don't want to support healthcare you don't have to.
If you don't want to support the military industrial complex you don't have to.
If you don't want to pay your congresspeople well... their bread is buttered elsewhere.

I also think the dialogue ought to shift from state run healthcare to just state funded hospitals.
Who gives a shit about a healthcare plan?
Let's just go into a place that we know provide the services we need and know we won't be turned away.

You don't want the government to run hospitals? They won't, the doctors will.

Let the librarians run the library.

The state just needs to keep it open.

And if you don't use it? You don't use it.
But it's nice to know it's there.

This thread is retroactively entitled "Dear @VerminSupreme"