Quote Originally Posted by seven-deuce View Post
Here's what I think. Everyone deserves a certain standard of living.
Nonsense. This is like saying that every chimp in the forest deserves a certain number of bananas. Try to rationally explain this property of "deserving" in relation to a chimp who has no bananas.

Why should the billionaire businessman and the penniless homeless man be treated differently when it comes to the standard of healthcare they receive? Does the homeless man not have a right to live because he has no money? A certain standard of healthcare should be provided for everyone, if the billionaire wants to pay for better healthcare over and above the standard given to all that's fine.
Why should the chimp that can climb best and lives in an area rich with bananas have more bananas than the chimp who lives on an island utterly devoid of bananas and never learned to climb trees? Does the second chimp not have a right to have as many bananas as he "needs"? A certain number of bananas should be provided for every chimp, if the first chimp wants to have more bananas, that's fine.

Healthcare is expensive - it takes a lot of labour and capital to produce, the people who produce it need food to eat and houses to live in, that means they have to earn a living or make a profit. If the homeless man can't pay, someone else has to - that takes food off of their table and clothes off their childrens backs to put that money effectively in the hands of the homeless man, that is good and decent all the time it's voluntary.

I don't think you would be preaching free market doctrine with such gusto if you were the one in desperate need of food or medicine.
Without a market in which people could make a living producing food or medicine, there wouldn't be any food or medicine.

Here's the nub of it - if it's so important to you that our hypothetical homesless man has food and medicine, no-one is stopping _YOU_ from paying for it. That's the great thing about a free market system - you are free to give away as much of your money as you like.