Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the current US healthcare system, it’s horrible and riddled with perverse incentives, and should be mostly (if not entirely) nationalized. I’m just not sure how to justify the idea that healthcare is a “right”.
I know that sometimes people on the left draw a comparison to the right to a public defender. I’m not sure that argument really holds up though, because you only have the right to a public defender under the specific circumstance of being prosecuted by the government for a crime. The logic there is “if the government is going to significantly interfere with your life by arresting you and trying you for a crime, then it at least has to allow you to get legal defense from a qualified attorney, even if you need the government to pay for it.” There’s not, like, a right to a publicly paid lawyer for any and all purposes.
As others have mentioned, the people who own the labor required are compensated for doing this, because it is, you know... their job. I would know, I am one of them. Public healthcare exists already.
This conservative argument is literally framing the healthcare worker as a slave. They can't imagine a good or service being produced unless someone is being exploited. So they concern troll you with the idea that a public service could not exist like that without you exploiting someone like they were slave labor that was forced to work that job.
I think this qualifies as the perversity thesis.
Conservatives don't care about slaves and slavery, they are quite happy to have slaves in the US, for example the hundred thousands and millions that are sentenced to slavery. They don't care about slaves, the US ensured that slavery was possible in militarily controlled parts of the world to supply US textiles cheap.
If conservatives care that no one is forced to labour then they ought to support unions and worker movements, since only the working class as actor can make it so that no working class person is forced to work.
Every modern society is based on people being forced to work. The state/police ensures that we have "official" union charters, which are mediated through laws, they force us to do work we wouldn't want to do. If police sends us away so that we don't protest fascists, we are forced to do work (moving away). Conservatives don't care about force or slavery, they care about not being privileged. Joke about them.
My lungs have to work harder every day since capitalists did pollute our air, which I did not consent too and neither did I consent to all the stuff that gets trapped in my lungs. Negative rights are as much a sham as positive rights. Discussion about rights often puts the spot light on morals, ethics and ideals, not on how the world works and that the working class is what conquers human rights.
I understand they still have, and enjoy wage slavery as well as imperialism. I meant it in the framing of chattel slavery, which deep down they still desire whether they realize it or not. They know however that openly wanting what people identify as slavery is unacceptable. So they try to strawman the position of socialized medicine as a perversion of "freedoms". My analogy is just me trying to diagnose their
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