The difference is the hospital will treat you anyway if you are in athreatening condition, and other places won't provide their serviceswithout payment no matter how desperately you need them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
you can live without the other services...

Andrei, the difference is very simple: it is really not your right , but your privilege to rent a hotel room, to drive and rent a car, to travel or to buy whatever you want, for that matter. But I just want you to think if you would consider it a privilege or a simple human right to seek medical attention if you arrive to the hospital with your child in serious condition, and you are - not you, but someone quite , hmmmm, unfortunate, impoverished, poor....Your Child still has this basic right to health care, right? - And , yes, you are right, it will be delivered, but after much humiliation..... and it really is not necessary. We are quite lucky that most ( not all) people who work in healthcare are quite compassionate, and we do treat plenty of people pro bono ( trust me,more then we can afford to) , but our healthcare should not rely on individual compassion, it should be, in it's very basic form, really a basic right.

__________________
Happy New Year to all! Virtual hugs!

there is no human rights to basic or any other healthcare.. rights are something you are born with (unless there are additional rights quaranteed by laws or constitution like 2nd amendment rights).. if u are turned away by a hotel and there is a subzero temp outside, u will die just as u will die if u r having a heart attack and turned away by a hospital.. but those are not rights, it's compassion of our society to help people when people r in a desperate situation.. just like we feed the hungry or homeless to help them stay alive, we pass laws not to turn away people in such emergency situation and even agree paying for it through paying high healthcare costs and sometimes taxes.. not having a healthcare coverage is not a desperate situation in most cases, but a choice by many that they chose it for different reasons (to save money for some or if those u can't afford it on your own and failed to find an employer providing health insurance).. demanding this (expensive) necessity from your countrymen, government is just feeling entitled and not wanting to provide for yourself.. and politicians exploit it to buy votes, others repeat their lies as a prayer learned over many years..

there is no human rights to basic or any other healthcare.. rights aresomething you are born with (unless there are additional rightsquaranteed by laws or constitution like 2nd amendment rights)..
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
spoken like a true humanitarian and a mother of three

if u are turned away by a hotel and there is a subzero temp outside, uwill die just as u will die if u r having a heart attack and turnedaway by a hospital..
------------------------------------------------------------------------
only if there's no other shelter around and the hotel is run by someone like you

but those are not rights, it's compassion of our society to help people when people r in a desperate situation..
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
no, it's called humanity, or living in a civilized world, and it's not restricted to our society... in fact, the United States is probably the only wealthy industrialized nation, that does not provide universal health care... unfortunately, some of us are doomed to remain trapped in the dark ages...

Well, we just see philosophical differences here. The fact that Sveta doesn't consider healthcare a human right is just her opinion. It is not just HER opinion, it is many others opinion. But, there are organizations and individuals who do hold a different opinion ( UN, Amnesty International, many NGO's, such as Gates Foundation) . This is actually one of the basic philosophical differences that did make healthcare debate so inflammatory

__________________
Happy New Year to all! Virtual hugs!

what I'm trying to say - is when you are a family on the fixed budget, with a bunch of kids and lots of expenses, like most of the working class , as well as middle class, any rhetoric is just that - rhetoric. You don't care about what portion of what you need to pay is anybody's profit, and whatever, you care about thousands of dollars you have to pay upfront, even before your insurance kicks in.
exactly! don't buy it if it's too expensive for u.. buy the less expensive coverage and save the money not "wasted" on premiums for times like that one (broken arm).. u may actually end up with an impressive sum for your healthcare needs AND would pay less to the horrible insurance companies.. (tr) and more to good compassionate healthcare workers who are compassionate but don't want to provide basic human rights to others for free.. :-(

exactly! don't buy it if it's too expensive for u.. buy the lessexpensive coverage and save the money not "wasted" on premiums fortimes like that one (broken arm)..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe Julia mentioned that the family in her example had a high deductible policy - those tend to be less expensive... also there are many states where the choice of individual health insurance is pretty limited...

healthcare workers who are compassionate but don't want to provide basic human rights to others for free..
-----------------------------------------------------------
then what exactly is your definition of compassionate?