Taxes are legitimate and providing services to people does not transfer wealth from individual to individual. It's only transfer payments that I object to (i.e. taxing one person and giving the money to another). I don't mind government taxing people and then using the money to provide services everybody can use.

 

And as I said, several jobs come with this force built-in: soldier, fireman, politician etc..

As a doctor you don't have to care for people for free, but you do have an obligation to help, just like everybody else does. I cannot, legally, watch an accident happen and refuse to provide whatever help I can to the victim and neither can a doctor. The fact a doctor can provide more help is incidental to the basic principle.

If I decide to learn more about first aid, my obligation to provide first aid also increases. If I study medicine, it goes through the roof.

 

I don't believe that people who have a problem with helping for free make the best doctors. Medicine is not a business, even though many people want it to be.

 

And yet this has not happened in western Europe where in most places medicine is socialised.

 

Not even. Countries that have had socialised medicine for decades (or over a hundred years in some cases) have not experienced such.

The fact that this happens in Cuba is a function of Cuba being a communist slave state. It's not a function of Cuba's socialised healthcare system.

 

And in this context, your taxes are used to provide a service (free delivery) only to those who do not pay those taxes. If she didn't pay any taxes, she wouldn't have to pay for the delivery either. Since she pays taxes, she is forced to pay for her delivery AND the delivery of those who do not pay taxes.

By pretending to be poor, a tax payer may recover some of the money that is taken from him/her to give to those who do not pay taxes. (which is a crime)

That might be the law, but in that case the law is immoral. You have a moral obligation to help, but should not have a legal obligation to help. If you do have a legal obligation to help than that law is immoral as it infringes on your rights.

You keep on pointing out that people have a legal obligation. I understood that from the start, I was always debating the morality of such laws. Saying "A is the LAW" has no relevance whatsoever on a discussion on whether or not such a law is moral.

Then you believe incorrectly; there is a reason why communist countries produce far fewer doctors.

Doctors ARE highly compassionate and want to help people (in general)... if they just wanted money they would be lawyers. But it is a matter of how much they are willing to sacrifice to help others.

sacrificing years of stressful and very hard work to help others and receive a lot of money and prestige? that is acceptable to many more people that sacrificing years of stressful and very hard work to help others and receive very little money, scorn, and mistreatment by the government.

The medicine system in western europe is bankrupt and they have a decent enough infrastructure as a leftover... Give them another 50 years to fall into further decay due to their communism and watch as they pass laws to deter leaving the country.

Its just a matter of degree, and where you can move to. Currently in the world you don't have a capitalist utopia... you have a declining into communism america, a backwards halfway communist europe, recovering ex communist nations like russia, and total crap slave states like cuba. When I say we are getting there I mean that in 50 years we could have a rich and powerful capitalist russia (if they stay on track), and dilapidated slave states in europe no better then cuba is today... and if something isn't changed, in america too. Never be sure that you are immune to danger... the jews in germany thought it would never happen to them, the average motorcyclist think he is somehow exempt, americans thought their economy is somehow immune (and yet see what is happening).

Actually, emergency services are available to everyone, and the rich benefit from them in the same way the poor do.




Anyone can go to a public hospital and receive treatment for free. You don't have to pretend to be poor.




I don't think that your personal moral system has anything to do with what society thinks is moral or immoral. I told you what the law says because the law is based on morality. It just happens not to be based on yours.

If you have a problem with the law dictating a different system of morals than yours, you can vote against the law but you cannot claim that the law is immoral as it that were an objective scientific testable fact.




You are not debating the morality of such laws, you are debating whether such laws agree with your own beliefs. They perhaps don't. But neither would laws based on your beliefs be moral according to most others' beliefs.

I don't believe in moral relativism but I do believe in competition of moral systems. A society based on the beliefs that there is no obligation to help probably wouldn't survive long. I take it such societies have long died out. Evolution applies to culture and morality as well as to animasl and plants.

Some moral systems are better than others. But yours is not proven or shown to be better than the one we currently have. Convince people that your system is better than the current system and we will see whether your system can compete and win. But don't just complain that you disagree with the current system and hence the current system is immoral. You are not a religious fundamentalist. Don't act like one.




I have no doubt that doctors are highly compassionate. I just think that doctors who believe that they don't have an obligation to help are not.

I'd rather have a doctor who feels obligated to help me than a doctor who thinks that it is good business to help me.

Incidentally, lawyer is another profession that is not a business (although lawyers treat it like one).




Why should doctors be better off than anybody else?

what a ridiculous statement. I do not need to preface every opinion statement I make with the disclaimer "this is my opinion and not an immutable fact", by virtue of being stated by me it is my opinion.

And if the law is based on morality, then I guess the debate on socialized healthcare is pointless in every country where it has been passed into law... because it is the "morality of society" and "your morality" is "irrelevant".

Are you intentionally misinterpreting what I am saying?

Arguing against bureaucrats legislating the exact measures of "compassion" is legally required has nothing to do with... you know what, there are so many wrong assumptions and out of context misinterpretations of what I said in this response I am not even going to bother.

Because their customers are willing to pay them a lot. Why should the government override the free market to decide how much they believe someone should earn?

If you argue as if your moral standards were universal and objective it wouldn't hurt if you did indeed do that.

 

I guess you can also base law on utility. But then we'd soon get into all sorts of bad trouble.

 

You and I both want some bureaucrat to legislate the exact measure of compassion. We merely disagree on what the measure is. You want it at zero, I want it at whatever is best for the survival of society.

There are no misinterpretations. You argue against a law because it disagrees with your morality and you do so by pretending that your morality is objective and hence any law that imposes a different morality than yours is immoral.

 

That's no reason to treat them differently. If I have to help people in an emergency, so do they, regardless of how much people are willing to pay them for such services.

 

Non sequitur. I didn't say anything at all about how much doctors should earn.

For all I care you, a non-doctor, could open a public transport company and charge whatever you want for transporting passengers. But if it is an emergency and somebody's life depends on your means of transport, you have the duty to help, as would anybody else who has the means to transport people.

If I made trampolines I could sell them for however much I want. But if a building burns down opposite my trampoline store and a fireman tells me he has to use one of my trampolines to allow people to escape the fire through second-floor windows (they will jump onto my trampoline), I have an obligation to let them use my trampoline and I cannot charge 2 million dollars, even though the market would certainly convince the would-be rescued to pay me whatever I demand.

The market works fine, until somebody has to choose between paying and dying. Whenever that choice happens the price for whatever it is that would save him rises to infinity (or whatever that person and all his relatives can afford). Emergency and life-saving treatment is what you might call a seller's market. You cannot shop around.

In fact, when it comes to healthcare, few people can really shop around. Do I know what procedure I need or do I rely on whatever the doctor tells me? I wouldn't even know what exactly is wrong with me.

 

Maybe you think I am incapable of arguing a hypothetical situation.

I completely agree with you that a person who refuse to lend aid, doctor or not, isn't compassionate. I have never argued that such a person is compassionate. I argued that doctors in general tend to compassionate. I argued that laws should not require giving aid. But those are separate and completely unlinked points. I am not insinuating that the same doctor is compassionate, doesn't want to give aid, and shouldn't have to give aid. They are completely separate issues.

And until you have mind reading devices you cannot tell the difference.

Oh, another issue with the "free in emergency", is that "free" just means someone else is paying for it. For a doctor to give aid he needs more than just his own personal skills. He needs equipment, a clean room, support staff, drugs, etc...

I agree if you mean that the duty to give aid goes beyond a law that says so (i.e. we would have such a duty even if the law would prohibit us from helping).

 

The same is true for our military. They protect me (and everybody else) but somebody else (and me) is paying for it. If I am poor and don't pay taxes, only somebody else pays for it.

Emergency aid has to be free because we cannot even determine if the patient/customer has the money to pay before he is stable enough to think and speak.

And at that point charging him for the emergency aid just because he happens to have spend his life working rather than being a slob doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

 

this brings to question what counts as an "emergency". Obviously if a person is brought to the hospital with a gunshot wound they should treat him rather then attempt to identify him and determine if he is insured since he would die in the interim. (And that should be paid for via taxes so that everyone benefits from it equally... that is, you don't double pay by paying for it once via taxes for other people, and once again for yourself because you make too much to "qualify").

My problem is that currently this is up to government bureaucrats to decide what is an isn't an emergency and they are doing a very poor job of it. ER rooms are full of non emergency cases. Or emergencies that unlike a gunshot wound, do not warrant taxpayer funded treatment (due to scarcity and cost).