"And the amount it saves the people who do need the help isn't actually enough to help them."
How do you know this, though? How do you know that the government-issued healthcare coverage IS enough to help them? It would be great if we had some numbers to compare the two.
"I believe access to healthcare should be a basic human right in any developed nation, and I don't believe people with more money should have access to better healthcare than poor people. Our basic rights are "life. liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and I don't believe any of those are possible without adequate healthcare, thus adequate healthcare needs to be a basic human right."
Okay, in response to this point, I'd like to ask you about food: food is just as, if not more, important than healthcare, right? However, there is no "universal food" that is government-issued. There are grocery stores, where you can get differing qualities of food products depending on how much you are willing to spend: higher-quality foods are more expensive, lower-quality foods are cheaper. However, no one in this thread has mentioned that adequate food needs to be a basic human right. Do you mind addressing this?
Your points about the corporations are interesting. I would say this though: the more favorable the conditions are for a company to do business, the more we as a society benefit. I believe this for 2 reasons: (1) we as the consumers will be charged less for the company's goods/services, (2) the more local employees the company will hire (compared to out-sourcing their employment).
Ok, let's look at 2 extremes, a minimum wage worker working 40 hours per week (assume $15/hour), and an average lawyer making $200 per hour, also 40 hours per week. MW = minimum wage, L = lawyer.
MW monthly income: $2,600, yearly: $31,200
L monthly income: $34,667, yearly $416,000
Let's say they both pay 10% income tax, so yearly taxes of $3,200 for MW and $41,600 for L. So, we reduce taxes. Let's say we cut them in half. We've now saved the MW worker $1,600 per year, but we've saved the L a whopping $20,800.
According to
https://www.debt.org/medical/hospital-surgery-costs/, the average cost of a single
day in a hospital is $3,949. So, by cutting taxes in half, the MW worker still can't afford to spend a single day in a hospital, while the L gets an extra 20 grand to play with every year.
The average elementary school teacher makes around $58,000 per year, so that same cut would save them $2,900; still less than the cost of a single
day in the hospital. It's also telling that if you google "how much does a hospital stay cost", the first result is debt.org...
As far as food, yes there is. It's called Food Stamps. And the quality of food is not the same as the quality of healthcare. If I want to spend more to eat sushi, great, that's an indulgence. There's no such thing as an indulgence of health care, unless you count optional procedures like cosmetic surgery. It's a comparison that doesn't make sense. I suppose it hasn't been said because it doesn't
need to be said, but of course access to food should be a right in any developed country.
As far as corporations, we unfortunately do not live in a fantasy land where corporations do the right thing. The more favorable the conditions are for a company to do business, the more
the company benefits. Look up the companies that just received massive bailouts and still laid off their work forces. Or the companies in 2008 that took payouts and just gave it to their CEOs as benefits packages. Corporations work only for their best interest. A benefit for them does not mean reduced prices or better wages for us.
And just as a final note about the MW vs L, one could make the argument that the MW is working
harder than the L. Yes, practicing law is stressful and requires advanced education and intelligence, but in this example both people are working 40 hours per week, the lawyer from a comfortable office, big house, around educated peers, with plenty of pocket money to spend on entertainment and services, and is arguably working a fulfilling job that they sought out, while the MW is standing for 8 hours per day at a soul-crushing dead end job, getting yelled at by customers, has a tiny apartment, and no money leftoever to spend on indulgences.
