Ah. The leftist "equality of outcome" leitmotif. You and the other poster have thrown out questions about basically who deserves what in society and how we most ethically determine who, if anybody, gets free stuff (paid for by the labor of others), and to what degree. While the underlying principle is overwhelmingly clear to people like me who reject socialism outright as evil, to those who haven't really considered it, read about, aren't really sure, there is a lot to unpack here to really be able to answer these questions. So sure, I'll give you a real answer rather than a drive-by repeated one-liner I got from a celebrity's Instagram about societal fairness (below their picture of partying on a private yacht). It's not going to be short and will require some thinking.
This socialist principle of equality of outcome, and that's what it is -- a core socialist principle antithetical to a free capitalist society, is rooted in the belief that poverty, low status, poor health, etc. is inherently virtuous while wealth, success, high standard of living, etc. are inherently wrong as they are the result of greed, familial money hoarding, simple dumb luck, or some combination of all of these, and that the morally correct thing to do is to forcefully rebalance everything so that everybody, no matter what choices you make in life, no matter what (if any) labor you perform, comes out equal in the end. This is the basic definition that guides leftist philosophy and ultimately policy making.
What capitalists, conservatives, libertarians, etc. anybody who rejects pure socialist philosophy outright believe is that a free society should have equality of opportunity and that you can rise to whatever level you want through the virtue of the choices you make in life. In other words, long term success in life is virtuous and should be celebrated because it is the result of moral decision making and that long term poverty and despair is the just outcome of a lifetime of poor decision making rooted in a lack of virtues including work ethic, self-restraint, intelligence seeking, etc.
Capitalism is not only the correct moral system because it's blind (free markets naturally resolve to a steady state where racism, sexism, and any other prejudices are not sustainable because a dollar has the same buying power in the hands of whoever holds it), it's also the correct system because it encourages people to make good and healthy decisions. If you want success, you know you have to work hard. If you want to be attractive, you know you have to eat well and work out. If you want to live a long time and feel good, you know you have to take care of your health and save for your old age. It follows that capitalist systems punish bad decision making. If you chose to drop out of high school, have unprotected sex with gang members and have their babies with no way to care for them, do drugs, and not learn a skilled trade, you are destined to have a poor and miserable life (and that is not wrong, it is just).
Whereas socialist redistributionist systems that force equality of outcome are inherently evil because they encourage and reward bad behavior while punishing good decision making and attempts at self-betterment. If you can not finish high school, do drugs, have gangbanger's babies, and then end up poor and stuck in minimum wage jobs, well that's all ok because the government will bail you out. Of course they will give you food and housing. But why is it fair that the rich get to enjoy a higher quality of life? Everyone should have the same quality of life in a moral society, right? So the government will give you decent housing with modern appliances. You'll have your wages artificially raised as an unskilled worker to be on par with skilled workers so you can buy big screen TVs and go out to dinner too. If that's not enough, the government will guarantee a minimum income. And you will get the same healthcare the rich get no matter what health choices you make. If you make poor health choices, you won't have to take a lifestyle hit to pay for. Because it's all guaranteed. And how is it all paid for? By reducing the income of the people who made the right choices in life. The man who studied hard in school, went to grad school, waited until marriage to have children, work long hours earlier in his career to save up and eventually make a high risk investment in a business activity that he was smart enough to see was a good opportunity, prosper and become wealthy from this investment, multiply the magnitude of his business and hire others and create jobs. Yes, that's how we'll pay for it. It's not fair that this man has such a nice lifestyle and can afford the best doctors in the world to care for him and his family. This is not an equality of outcome. We'll take his money. There is a clear income inequality and the fact that it exists proves that it is unjust, and therefore it will be forcefully redistributed. Doctors will be paid the same (close to the same as what unskilled laborers earn) no matter who they treat in order to prevent those with more money from preferentially utilizing the best doctors and treatments. So then, looking at all this, why would a young person chose to work hard for decades, restrain from a hedonistic lifestyle, learn a skilled trade, take care of their health. And look at that rich guy who has so much! He is healthy and fit. The poor are fat and disabled through their own doing. This is of course viewed as a tragic outcome of capitalism and again can be fixed through equality of outcome. There will be no societal punishment for being obese. Fat shaming is wrong. Drug abuse and alcoholism? Accommodations for all these things will be made for you at the expense of others such that your choices don't harm your quality of life as much. Society will openly praise this as virtuous and people naturally self-destruct and become reliant on the state to survive, which naturally lends itself to dictatorship and authoritarian regimens, and these people decide who gets what and how much which lends itself to real racism and other prejudices (you know, the kind that capitalistic free markets prevent).
This is the fate of literally every single socialist experiment in the history of the world. An unequal distribution of talents and resources have existed in literally every human civilization since the beginning of time because that is the way of nature. And attempts to correct nature and stop the natural progression of things end up poorly. Socialism ultimately ends up creating mass poverty, despair, and death, and has killed hundreds of millions since its inception. You know who wanted equality of outcome? Hitler. Hell, the Nazis actually tried to genetically engineer everyone to be their idea of superior and if that didn't work they would just kill you. Yes, their version of equality of outcome was everyone living having the maximum outcome humanly achievable. Whereas the communists wanted to achieve equality of outcome by lowering everybody to some middle ground (and they killed a hell of a lot of people too). Can you see that government forcing equality of outcome doesn't exactly have a good track record?
Even if a leftist doesn't fully believe in total equality of outcome and thinks that it's ok for people to reap a portion of the success they create in life, the attempt at partial rebalancing ultimately falls back on this same flawed principle and is just as immoral.
Our society was built on Judeo-Christian values. It is perverse to look at the Bible, pick out a few passages and somehow twist that into thinking its a justification for material handouts. Judeo-Christian values are the exact opposite. You are born in the image of God and have the choice between right and wrong in life, and through God, you can make the right choices, and by making these correct choices, you will be justly rewarded.
Now, you are correct. Some people are born into better homes than others. This is out of their control. But this does not justify forcefully creating an ultimate equality of outcome. We are talking about modern day America, the most free society in the history of the world where everybody has the best opportunities in the world. Unfortunately for some, they will have to work harder. This is nature. This is evolution. This is correct and not something that should be artificially corrected. If you are born without a left arm, you will have to work harder in life to succeed. This does not make it ok to go and cut everybody else's left arm off in the name of fairness. But you likely have other gifts and talents. Maybe you were born with an IQ of 70. You will have to work harder to do better in life. This does not make it ok to reduce a NASA engineer's salary from $150,000/year to $60,000 year in order to raise your salary at Starbucks from $20,000 year to $60,000/year.
This is nature. This is life. This is reality. Maybe it sucks but that's the way it is. And leftists want to live in false realities. Here's a hint: Nature ALWAYS wins in the end. You cannot forcefully fix the natural process that the strongest survive and good choices result in good things while bad choices result in bad things. If you try to do this, you cause mass suffering.
So there is all of that theory, which at least gives us a fundamental background to try and tackle the practical situation you are asking about, which is should we give healthcare handouts, who gets them, and to what degree?
People who have created their own miserable situation or who have the ability to better themselves do not get government handouts, period. Now they can get charity from community, church, secular charity missions, etc. And that's fine and they should because these things rightfully exist in order to help people better themselves. But government handouts encourage long-term dependence.
People who were never able to make it in this world, no matter how hard they tried, should in my opinion receive a level of care such that they have a comfortable life. For instance, severely mentally handicapped people, children who become paralyzed, schizophrenics, the criminally insane, etc. This is best administered at the state and local level. When welfare programs are federalized, they are complete disasters.
For everybody else, it is your responsibility to:
1. Become educated. There is no excuse for not graduating high school and pursuing either college or a skilled trade. Period. If you choose this life, you deserve to suffer the consequences.
2. Get a job. Any job. If you don't want to work, you die. Buckets of fried chicken do not magically appear on your table. Your insulin doesn't suddenly show up. Period. This is just.
3. Save and spend responsibly. If you spend all your income and maxed out all your credit cards to buy fancy things and have zero savings and forego buying health insurance and disability insurance, if something bad happens, you lose everything and may spend the rest of your life paying for it. Again, you made bad choices, you accept the consequences.
4. Reproduce responsibility. Don't have children out of wedlock. Chose your partners carefully. Bring children into this world when you are financially able to raise them properly to become someone who will follow these rules. Get pregnant accidentally? Just minding your own business walking down the street and got pregnant? Again, choices. Unable to raise a baby? Not the baby's fault, so resources will be provided but ultimately your life will be a lot harder because of the choices you made. As it rightfully should be.
Now you're looking at this and saying just how cruel I am. There is nothing wrong with making a few bad choices in life. We all do it. This goes back to the whole Judeo-Christian thing. Humans screw up sometimes. And there is naturally a punishment for these choices to encourage us to make good choices in the future. It is morally wrong to reward a lifetime of continued bad decision making.
With regards to healthcare, if you want life extending treatments at any cost so that you squeeze every last second out of life, this is your imperative. We all die eventually. It is not morally right to steal money from others to keep throwing terminal lifesaving treatments that extend life by a few months to someone with a liver and body ravaged by HepC and alcohol and a life on the streets. If you're in this situation and you've become wealthy, then sure, go nuts and spend a million bucks in your last few months of life. But you will ultimately die. This is reality, and again, it's a reality that some don't want to accept. And if you haven't figured out where this is going by now, you haven't been paying attention. In the socialist system, there will be this equality of outcome everyone wants so bad, so the HepC and alcoholic homeless person receives the same treatment as the person who worked hard his whole life, which is a lot less treatment and effective care than he otherwise would have been to provide for himself. And you say I'm the cruel one?
The dramatic shift to the left among Democrats to outright socialist platforms in recent years in this country should be frightening everyone now the same way Islamic terrorism was frightening every one 15 years ago. It is a slippery slope. Europe will likely fall under the weight of socialism in our lifetimes (as it already has multiple times in previous generations), and now for the first time there is a real threat that our country will be shoved onto this societal vortex of superficially-pleasing but fundamentally-evil policies straight down the toilet drain.
Correct, they have a socialist agenda and cherry pick stories to overemphasize their narrative and use things like race and religion as a way to incite revolt in our society against our perceived oppressors. The original Marxist teachings rely on using class struggle to divide the people and incite this revolt. They try to do that do, but if they've found it to be more effective to bring in race, religion, and a hierarchical intersectional system of perceived oppression to try and link it all together to get their candidates into office and policies implemented. See above, last paragraph. You'd have to be living under a rock to not see what happened with the Jesse Smollett story recently. It was fake news. It's a big problem and not something that should be mocked.
