Someone on a reddit thread was whining about already being at their 5k deductible this year and how they'd have to pay 400$ to their neurologist tomorrow for their appointment... this started as a reply to them but I decided to write it here instead

Why (all) medical care isn't a right, and why it cannot be with our current level of technological achievement:

Most medical care is a privilege. It is a luxury. Calm down calm down, just hear me out. Having someone set a broken bone should be a 'right', certain mental health care should be a 'right' as a mentally unwell person can be a detriment to society around them. If something involves a scalpel, cancer treatment etc is a privilege and should remain such.

Setting a broken bone is something a fairly unskilled individual can perform and leave the individual with the broken bone having fairly good functionality of that limb when it heals. Most surgery requires a half dozen or more people, a sterile environment, hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions of dollars) of specialized equipment, all sorts of consumables (paper gowns, gloves, gauze, betadine, anesthetics, staples etc) and absolutely should not be free or subsidized.

We aren't to a technological point where all medical care, or even most medical care, is something inexpensive that can be a 'right'. In the next several decades, or century, this is going to change. There are now robots that can perform some surgical procedures with zero input from doctors (mostly sutures and the like), medical technology gets better and better and eventually will reach a point where it largely stops improving and then you'll start to see the cost come down as production methods allow the machines and instruments to be made cheaper and cheaper. THEN, most medical care starts to become a right as it becomes more and more automated and requires less and less education.

With the way the technology is now, demanding cheap or free healthcare for the masses is like demanding the top violinist in the world to come and teach every child that wants to play the violin for free. Or demanding that the best mechanics in the world work on your car for free. Or that the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter should come and work for free or for pennies on the dollar. Starfleet doesn't exist, these are not the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Society is not at a point where we can offer such services free to all because they are skilled trades with expensive equipment and lengthy educational requirements.