the healthcare/life dichotomy

To those people who say that healthcare is not a right, but a good or service to be bought...and that life is a right, as in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I would like to know what you see as the delineation between health and life.

If, as a nurse, I saw you on the street bleeding, and I walked away mumbling that "healthcare is not a right because you can't pay me," and then you died, would I not be guilty of taking away your right to life?

If you become incapacitated with a fatal form of cancer that has a good chance of remission with treatment, but you are unable to work due to the illness and lose your insurance, thereby being unable to cover the doctor's bills, have you lost your right to healthcare? Even if being denied healthcare also deprives you of your right to life?

What about in the case of a mother who considers aborting her fetus because she is single and can't afford to raise the child, who then decides to keep it...and then the baby is born with a congenital disease that requires surgery to survive? Why, according to the religious and governmentally-conservative person, did this baby have the right to life in the womb, but not once born?

The other night at work, I had a conversation with two Christian nurses. When I mentioned universal healthcare, the responses were "It's theft," and even worse: "People die, that's life." Would you feel the same way if you were put in the situation of having no insurance and no money to pay for a doctor? Would it be okay to let you die?

Charities will never be able to cover healthcare for all. And while I agree that government-funded insurance is a redistribution of wealth, there is a moral imperative that goes beyond what Old Testament Christians like to cite as the breaking of the 8th commandment. It's Jesus' call to care for your fellow humans--"Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Surely this should come before the redistribution of wealth from the taxpayers to the military machine that costs us billions each year.

Healthcare and life are synonymous. You can't have one without the other. Even the person with a common cold could die if it progressed to a systemic infection. There are so many seemingly minor things in this world that would kill us if we didn't have medicine and surgery. Where exactly should the line be drawn on who gets treatment? Or should the line be drawn at all? And if the line is drawn, are we not essentially forming the "death panels" that were feared during the healthcare debate?