Nobody compelled them to become doctors. If you are going to become a doctor, then you have to provide care to those who need it.

If you choose to become a police officer, firefighter, soldier, etc then, yes, you are compelled to provide services to others. Don’t want to do that? That’s perfectly fine. Then don’t take those jobs.

So I take it you believe that firefighters and police officers are slaves as well?

Clear thinking really isn’t your strong suit, is it Zython? Where did I make a stupid statement like that?

Right here:

So you’re saying that every American is entitled to the services of doctors and nurses, whether they want to provide it or not? What happens if they don’t want to? Will they be forced to under threat of legal action?

I believe the 13th Amendment was passed to keep this sort of activity from happening.

Next:

You do realize that “health care” primarily consists of doctors, nurses and various medical personnel providing a service, don’t you? And as soon as you make that service a right, something that people are entitled too, then the people providing that service are now under obligation to provide that service whether they want to or not. And if they don’t? They are depriving people of their civil rights and can be prosecuted accordingly.

Again, do you consider firefighters and police under “indentured servitude”?

And Dave, you ignored my question last time, so I’ll ask again:

Why do you hate America so much?

Let the invisible hand of the free market decide their fate.

I feel comfortable predicting that almost any time you add a statutory right, conservatives will say it’s a violation of the 13th Amendment, sue to have it declared unconstitutional (though having decent lawyers, will not try to use the 13th for the legal challenge), then get used to it and start using it to their advantage when possible, and agitating for its reversal when not.

Demanding that the government institute universal health care and revising the Constitution to add health care as one of our basic “rights” are two entirely different things.

Assuming King Obama the Merciful is able to ram that amendment through, good luck finding enough doctors willing to keep practicing in order to staff all those new hospitals and clinics you are going to have to build. Plenty of doctors today are leaving their practices because of all the government rules and requirements (and paperwork), not to mention the hoops they have to jump through to avoid malpractice lawsuits (google “defensive medicine”).

Rights have a multitude of sources. There are federal Constitutional rights. There are state constitutional rights. There are federal and state statutory rights. (NY, for example, has found a right to shelter in its state consitution, though Dave may not consider a right because the homeless can’t use it to enslave construction workers.) There are common law rights deriving from the Anglo-American legal tradition (these are the ones Dave seems to be trying to talk about with regard to the Ninth Amendment as a saving clause). There are rights theoretically deriving from international agreements to which the U.S. is a party, though good luck getting those enforced in U.S. courts.

Federal Constitutional rights are the ones that are best known, but statutory rights probably have the biggest impact on our lives. For example, in the creation of entitlement programs, the government creates a right. Or once we have Medicaid, if I fall within its guidelines, I have a right to it. Moreover, this is a property right, which brings the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantees into play.

When one says, “Health care is a right,” one is speaking in a normative sense: the federal government ought to ensure, as it does with Medicaid for low-income families and Medicare for the disabled and elderly, that all Americans have health care. Once the federal government creates such a program through statute or regulation, there will be a right.

To the extent Obama seems to be proposing a federal version of what Massachusetts is doing, I don’t stress over the language of rights versus responsibilities. Because he is providing access, he sees it as a right, but because there is a mandate on parents, it also creates a responsibility.

There are folks like Ron Paul who get very caught up in “natural rights,” but such people are essentially irrelevant to getting rights enforced in the courts.

Rights have a multitude of sources. There are federal Constitutional rights. There are state constitutional rights. There are federal and state statutory rights. (NY, for example, has found a “right to shelter,” though Dave may not consider it one because the homeless can’t use it to enslave construction workers.) There are rights theoretically deriving from international agreements to which the U.S. is a party, though good luck getting those enforced in U.S. courts.

Federal Constitutional rights are the ones that are best known, but statutory rights probably have the biggest impact on our lives. For example, in the creation of entitlement programs, the government creates a right. Or once we have Medicaid, if I fall within its guidelines, I have a right to it. Moreover, this is a property right, which brings the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantees into play.

When one says, “Health care is a right,” one is speaking in a normative sense: the federal government ought to ensure, as it does with Medicaid for low-income families and Medicare for the disabled and elderly, that all Americans have health care. Once the federal government creates such a program through statute or regulation, there will be a right.

To the extent Obama seems to be proposing a federal version of what Massachusetts is doing, I don’t stress over the language of rights versus responsibilities. Because he is providing access, he sees it as a right, but because there also is a mandate on parents, it also creates a responsibility.

There also are folks like Ron Paul who get very caught up in “natural rights,” but such people are essentially irrelevant to getting rights enforced in the courts.

Compelling doctors to “do their fucking jobs” (as you so charmingly put it) by making their services a right that other people are entitled to IS involuntary servitude you fucking git.

No, it isn’t, and only a moron would think it was. It’s their JOBS. Which they CHOSE. And get paid for.

Clear thinking really isn’t your strong suit, is it Zython? Where did I make a stupid statement like that?

You do realize that “health care” primarily consists of doctors, nurses and various medical personnel providing a service, don’t you? And as soon as you make that service a right, something that people are entitled too, then the people providing that service are now under obligation to provide that service whether they want to or not. And if they don’t? They are depriving people of their civil rights and can be prosecuted accordingly.

I do understand it. You clearly don’t. Prick.

passively making poverty essentialy a crime punishable by death

Not me. I am however, all for making stupidity essentially a crime punishable by shunning. Consider yourself shunned.

I notice you’ve subtly moved away from your argument that asking Doctors to do their fucking jobs is a violation of the 13th Amendment.

Not at all. Compelling doctors to “do their fucking jobs” (as you so charmingly put it) by making their services a right that other people are entitled to IS involuntary servitude you fucking git.

No, but healthcare isn’t a right in the UK any more than it is in the US. The British government chooses to provide national healthcare via taxation, they are not doing it because it is one of the rights called out in the British Bill of Rights.

You, like others here, are having some trouble understanding the difference between what are rights (i.e. freedom of speech, right to bear arms, freedom from unreasonable search & seizure, right to confront your accusors, etc.) and what are things that people “should” have (i.e. affordable healthcare, clear air and water, nutritous food, etc.).

Color me unsurprised.