Healthcare is a commodity

[PetiteOpRN]

You heard me, healthcare is a commodity, not a right.

I'm writing this post because there are comments made every days about how "the problem with modern health care is the fact that it's treated like a commodity, not a right," and various other statements to the same effect.

A commodity is a good or a service that is exchanged for money. Examples are food, housing, cars, cute shoes, and healthcare. All of these things require scarce resources combined with labor (another scarce resource) to produce the final good.

My time is scarce, and people do not have a "right" to it. Same goes for doctors. My parents (pediatrician and neurosurgeon) sacrificed time with their family because of the attitude that as doctors they have a responsibility to society to be on call 24/7. Their roles as physicians fulfilled other peoples' "right" to healthcare, while their children were raised by babysitters.

This attitude ends with me -- my top priorities are my family and myself. The hospital/patients are a distant 3rd and 4th. No one has a right to healthcare. I don't have a right to healthcare. If I want to seek out and purchase healthcare, then I can based on my right to freely associate with other individuals. But no person has any God-given right to my time or expertise or that of any other healthcare worker.

To assert that healthcare is a right is to advocate for slavery. No thanks.

[juliaann]

To assert that healthcare is a right is to advocate for slavery. No thanks.

Um, disagree. Healthcare workers get paid to do their job (which they've chosen to accept) every day and then they go home. They are not slaves, even if someone is advocating healthcare as a right of all people. That is a really unfortunate analogy.

[PetiteOpRN]

Um, disagree. Healthcare workers get paid to do their job (which they've chosen to accept) every day and then they go home. They are not slaves. That is a really unfortunate analogy.

If a hospital has one attending physician in a given specialty, they are literally on call 24/7. No one signs up with the expectation that everyone else in the department will all retire at the same time. When there is one neurosurgeon in the entire hospital (level 1 trauma center), and he has to work 36-hours in house without a break, he does not have an option. Go home at the end of the day? Yeah, right.

And many of the ED patients he consults, as well as traumas and inpatients, will default on hospital payments. Insurance companies pay beans. Reimbursement is a joke.

So no, he did not sign up to work these hours, and he is not paid for doing his job. People feel entitled to his services because he is a doctor.

His situation is extreme, but it illustrates the problem with the "healthcare is a right" line of thinking. Maybe it is a little better for other healthcare workers, but the attitude is the same.

[juliaann]

When there is one neurosurgeon in the entire hospital (level 1 trauma center), and he has to work 36-hours in house without a break, he does not have an option. Go home at the end of the day? Yeah, right.

There are always other options. They may not make financial or emotional or practical sense, but they're there.

I get what you're saying, sometimes you end up in a situation you didn't expect. And I definitely understand the long hours msot physicians work. But I still find the analogy to slavery to be in very, very poor taste.

[PetiteOpRN]

There are always other options. They may not make financial or emotional or practical sense, but they're there.

I get what you're saying, sometimes you end up in a situation you didn't expect. And I definitely understand the long hours msot physicians work. But I still find the analogy to slavery to be in very, very poor taste.

Ok, but whenever you say you have a "right" to someone else's time or service you are negating the other person's free will. That is what I take issue with.

[juliaann]

Ok, but whenever you say you have a "right" to someone else's time or service you are negating the other person's free will. That is what I take issue with.

The person doesn't have to comply, though. I can sit here all day thinking I have the right to all sorts of things - it doesn't mean I'm going to get them (and try as I might, I just can't make my checking account balance double just because I think I deserve it!). It just makes me delusional and possibly rude, depending to what extent I make my presumed "injustice" known to the world.

That does sound like an awful situation, I agree. But it sounds like poor planning on the part of the facility than anything - someone working shifts like that should be compensated according to the level of sacrifice they're making until other physicans can be brought on to share the load, in my opinion. Although I admit I know little about hiring physicians and am sure it's more complicated than that....

[SuesquatchRN, BSN, RN]

I live in a rural, medically underserved area. NO ONE here, in health care, isn't overworked. Yet we choose to stay in the field.

[TigerGalLE, BSN, RN]

Yea but you can't sue your bank because they didn't double your bank account. People can sue because the neurosurgeon was late seeing a consult. Just sayin

[juliaann]

Yea but you can't sue your bank because they didn't double your bank account. People can sue because the neurosurgeon was late seeing a consult. Just sayin

If a consult is late, it's late. That has nothing to do with whether or not the patient feels like healthcare is a right. Now, whether there's a good, defensible reason for it being late is up to the legal system to determine, and since I know nothing about that, I won't comment except to say it's unfortunate that people get sued for doing their jobs especially when they're overworked, but it happens for a number of reasons, not just perceptions about healthcare as a right or a service.

[HealthShepherd]

Children have a right to an education. Therefore, teachers are their slaves.

Detainees have a right to a phone call and to be informed of the charges against them. Therefore, cops are their slaves.

Religious people have the right to practice their religion. Therefore, clergy are their slaves.

Citizens have the right to vote. Therefore, elections workers are their slaves.

Clearly, we need to abolish all rights and the notion of rights. Then we'll be free.

[/sarcasm]

[PetiteOpRN]

Education is a commodity. You didn't have a "right" to nursing school, did you? Just because the government provides public education, does not make it a right. Just because something is good does not make it a right.

The "one phone call rule" is a convention of the criminal justice system, not a "right" asserted by any philosophical doctrine.

The right to practice one's religion is essentially the right not to be forced to practice someone else's. I don't need a priest to help me pray.

My thoughts on voting...well, that's a discussion for another day, suffice it to day that voting is not a natural right asserted by philosophical doctrines either, it is a political tool meant to pacify the masses.

[twois]

Assuming a system in which all people are guaranteed access to healthcare in some manner by the government under which they reside... isn't said government, by dealing in health care as a commodity and paying those who choose to work in the field, providing health care as a right to its citizens? Can't it be both?

Granted, those citizens are going to pay for it in taxes anyways, so it's hardly an unencumbered right, but... seems to me an awful lot like the "right" to go to school that we have as children or the "right" to use the roads that we pay for in taxes.

Am I just seeing this naively?