The debate over whether or not healthcare is a right or a privilege has been raging for over a century. When the healthcare debate rages, one of the dialectics that fuels the debate is the semantic meaning of the word “rights.” While we all have a generalized sense of what this means – something we are entitled to simply because we exist – the debates over healthcare arise from differing ideas regarding how rights are idealized and from these idealizations: how they should be enforced. Parties who believe that healthcare is a right often operate from a rhetoric of positive rights, whereas those who believe health care is a privilege often operate from the rhetoric of negative rights. The right to health care is an internationally recognized human right. Instituting a right to health care could lower the cost of health care. A right to health care could save lives. Providing all citizens the right to health care is also good for economic productivity.
orld War I was unlike any preceding wars due to its distinct nature. The new technology, tactical strategies, and industrialization contributed to the massive loss of life, and neither side achieved an overwhelming victory in the end. The nature of World War I, as the countries and soldiers involved understood it at the time, was fairly complex and multi-faceted due to battle strategies, lack of definitive victories, and uncertainty regarding how long the war was going to last.
In 1916, the war had been ongoing for approximately two years, and both sides of the conflict were still relatively optimistic about the war. They had not yet reached a point of wartime exhaustion and political/social unrest, and each side believed that they had the opportunity to make strides and hoped to be moving closer towards a resolution. Both, the Central Powers and the Entente/Allies, had achieved varying degrees of tactical victories throughout the course of the war thus far. Therefore, the war was very back-and-forth in terms of which side held the upper-hand in the conflict. The Central Powers were tactically victorious during the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive by effectively driving the Russians back hundreds of miles, whereas the Entente was tactically successful during the Siege of Przemysl, as the Austro-Hungarians were forced to surrender the fort and were unable to conduct an offensive without the assistance of the Germans for the remainder of the war. In 1916, the Allies were anxious to launch a large offensive against the Germans on the Western Front, and thus, the Battle of the Somme was conceived.
In order to wage these large offensives, all of the armies were forced to rely upon significant manpower and military technology. However, the battles up until this point were very bloody and caused significant casualties to all countries participating. Crown Prince Rupprecht commented on the Entente’s great loss of life saying, “This success cost the English, according to careful estimates, a loss of at least 230,000 men…total losses of our enemies must, therefore, amount to about 350,000” (“The Battle of the Somme by Crown Prince Rupprecht”, 38). Great Britain enacted conscription for the first time for males aged 18-41 because the soldiers on the front were getting worn down and battle plans called for large frontal attacks with thousands of men. Nevertheless, an increasing problem was that new soldiers were “still far from being fully trained,” but the British needed bodies at the front lines so they threw them in anyway (“Sir Douglas Haig, British Commander-in-Chief in France and Flanders, 2nd Dispatch”, 2). The British adopted a policy called Pal’s Battalions, which had men serve with their friends and family from home. The objective was to make the men braver when they were ordered up-over-the-top of the trenches as they marched into death at No Man’s Land, but this strategy proved very deadly. In contrast, Germany had a large army and a significant reserve of officers and trained soldiers of which they relied upon to continuously supply the trench lines. Advances in technology such as t
