What are the implications of health care as a privilege, not a right, for the poor,

[socrates]

sick, uninsured? I hear this argument allot from the conservatives, that health care should be thought of and seen as a privilege, not a right, and that insurance companies shouldn't be expected to offer insurance to people with preexisting conditions or grave illnesses. As things stand now in the U.S. poor, ill people who come into the emergency room of a hospital can't be legally turned away for lack of their ability to pay.

If we passed laws, from federal to municipal, defining medical care as a privilege that will only be available to those who can afford it, does that mean that anyone who can't afford it will be regularly turned away from doctors offices, clinics and hospitals only to return to their homes, assuming they have homes, to die?

I've heard some conservatives claim that anyone not covered by insurance policies, unable to afford insurance or medical care, could and should be cared for by non governmental church and charity groups, but can we really count on those groups to adequately care for all of the poor and uninsured? If they can't take up all of the slack now, how and why would they be able to later?

Wouldn't the official, federal and social perception of health care as a privilege, to be made available only to those who can afford it, inevitably lead to the death, sometimes slow and painful, of allot of poor people, in effect making poverty a crime punishable by death?

[Terry]

What else do you think is a right for anyone?
Food
House
Clothing
Cars
TV Sets
Computers

If you want any of these things, you should buy them and not expect the government to give them to you. Get off the welfare plantation.