President Obama and the progressive Left believe in their heart of hearts that health care is a "right"...but is it? Should it be? by R.J. Moeller
(conservative)
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
"Health care is right, not a privilege." -Barack Obama
"The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder…The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy." -Frederic Bastiat
The latest in the ever-changing news from the White House is that the administration will potentially be willing to concede their "public option" plan in any final health care reform bill. In the face of mounting disapproval, President Obama would be making the smart political move by backing away from the wildly unpopular idea. Americans should be excited by the fact that their voices were heard, but there are two important points that scream for our attention from this entire ordeal.
First, we must not let our elation over the possibly averted federal takeover of our health care cloud the fact that the most influential Democrats in this country actually wanted the plan to succeed. We never should have even come this close to the public option becoming a reality, and please note that the only bi-partisanship displayed this entire summer was between moderate Democrats in Congress and Center-Right Americans around the country who opposed the Obama-Pelosi plan. The public option was, and always has been, only overwhelmingly supported by progressive liberals.
Second, and in light of the first, Americans absolutely must learn from this teachable moment why it is Leftists like Barack Obama both believe in socialized medicine, and will never cease to fight to bring it to our shores.
Now a right is a very serious thing. Perhaps unwittingly, Americans have cheapened the term, distorting the true meaning of "rights" through an ironic combination of over-use verbally and neglect intellectually, but that does not mean it cannot be reclaimed for a new generation. In fact, it must be re-claimed or we will soon find ourselves, this great experiment in republican democracy, on the same ash heap of history where lesser, inferior civilizations now lay.
If America fails, it won’t be because of the ideas laid out in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, but because her people confused and exploited the most basic precepts, values, and principles of their national inheritance.
Chief among the ideas currently under assault is the notion of "rights".
As melodramatic as all this may sound, please understand that when the President of the United States publicly asserts that the service of health care provided by trained medical professionals is now a "right", a divergent path from the republican one we’re supposed to be on has just been presented to you as a legitimate, alternate option. Walking down it will most certainly have real and definite repercussions, whether you embrace the president’s assertion or not. Ideas have consequences.
Practically speaking, a right is something that your government, your neighbor, owes to you no matter what. No if’s, and’s or but’s about it: if something is a right, then you cannot be kept from it.
The most important of rights are ones that involve something others cannot do to you, not what they must do for you.
Freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right to life (i.e. prohibitions against murder), and Habeas Corpus are rights. No one has a right to sleep with whomever they want, whenever they want, but we all have the right to tell someone they can't sleep with us any time we want.
Despite what you might have been misled to believe, health care and health insurance are goods; they are services; they are commodities. People work hard to produce and provide them. In the case of medical professionals, they have spent a massive amount of time and money, taken significant personal risks, to prepare to provide John Q. Customer with the strep test or brain surgery or hip replacement he needs. The United States became the medical system that people from countries all around the globe come to use in spite of the government’s involvement, not because of it.
For a quick mental exercise to help dramatize my concern over President Obama’s misguided claim that health care is a right, substitute "health care" with the words "car" or "washing machine".
The moment you picture Nancy Pelosi standing at the podium of a press conference to announce the new "right" to a working automobile for every adult, or Harry Reid releasing a press statement ensuring that he and the Democrats will fight to put "a new washing machine in every family’s laundry room", the preposterous nature of Obama’s statement ought to be readily evident.
Who will provide the car for someone who cannot work? For someone who refuses to work? For the person who wraps his or her car around a telephone pole after a MGD-64 bender at the local watering hole? Or for the person who would rather hand-wash their clothes and keep the washing machine funds in order to be able to take a family vacation or buy a purebred Lassie-looking collie?
Will this new "right" be enacted the way it is legally supposed to be, with an amendment to the Constitution? Or will we continue the time-honored, bi-partisan tradition of circumventing the "rule-book" we only like to point to when it helps us defend pet-issues such as Roe v. Wade or Gun rights?
Political foresight involves the ability to see down the road to the likely results of the words that come from the mouths of politicians. This is a difficult skill to master; especially as it pertains to people we may personally like or have voted for. Most Americans do in fact like Barack Obama, and that is not a bad thing. But from the man who has constantly reminded us that "words matter", it is not reactionary or irrational to piece his together in order to form a general blueprint of the national designs that the president and leading Democrats in Washington claim to have for the country.
Health care, in the mind of the American Leftist, is a right that the federal government should ensure with the tax dollars of wealthier citizens. This is why they will never stop trying to get socialized medicine.
The fact that nearly 90% of Americans are happy with their current health care is of little consequence to a progressive liberal like Barack Obama precisely because he has already accepted the premise that "free" health care is a right. The fact that serious improvements can be immediately made to the cost of health care through measures such as Tort Reform legislation, and allowing American citizens to purchase their health insurance from any company in any state, matters little to the politician who long ago settled it in his or her heart that the elite-led State always knows better than the individual.
If in the consciences of our Commander-in-Chief, his administration and cabinet, and the ranking members of a Democrat-controlled congress, health care is a right, does anyone actually believe that their real intention is nothing more than a mere cost-effective alternative to private insurance? And if that is the case, if the current Leftist power brokers in Washington have no desire whatsoever to bring the health care system under their bureaucratic thumbs (should they be given the chance), then what sort of people are they? Have they no real convictions?
Have they been lying to their constituents for decades? Are those Americans who voted for Barack Obama because they desire Britain’s health care system not furious? Are the special interest groups and unions who rallied support and funds for then-Senator Obama not incensed that the promise of a public option leading to single-payer, State-run health care was all a ruse?
In one breath the Left tell us they believe in their heart of hearts that it is a right to have your government (via the coercively-taken fruits of more-successful people’s labors) provide you with "free" health insurance and care, and in the next, that we who disagree with their hypothesis and warn others about its potentially devastating effects on our nation’s economy (and soul) are fear-mongers who aren’t being honest about the "facts".
Liberal Democrats have been trying for decades to get socialized medicine. They have specifically attempted to use the "public option" Trojan Horse numerous times. President Obama is on record as having said that the attempt at a public option would be his first legislative step towards a day when the federal government controlled the entire health care system.
In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky’s seminal book on community organizing Barack Obama believed in so much that for more than a decade he taught classes to new activist recruits on its strategy and tactics from, the reformer-agitator is encouraged to use language that his or her audience is comfortable and familiar with in order to enact changes that the public would otherwise oppose.
Any of this ringing a bell?
I am open and honest regarding my ardent belief that health care is not a right: it is a privilege. Trimming down the size, scope, and waste of our government could more than help provide the funds needed to graciously aid those in the most desperate of needs. Private citizens and charities giving more of their time and money should be the rallying cry for all those who truly care for the disadvantaged. Specific, limited reforms, like the ones I mentioned earlier, can drastically decrease the costs of health care for everyone else.
Ignoring the reality of limited resources, our Constitution’s limits for what the federal government can do, and the inferior results of other nations’ State-controlled, single-payer health care systems is beyond foolish.
You know where I stand. If only our president was as forthcoming.
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As you mentioned we do have a right to "life". So, a basic question might be, "do we have a right to deny life saving treatment due to financial considerations? shall wealth determine life?" this is of course, clouded more than anything by the two dominant health care positions, neither of which offer a clear answer.
And, we have had a single payer system for quite awhile known as medicare and medicaid. these programs and our private insurance system are both socialized systems. insurance as a means of basic payment for basic services and goods would never exist in a free market. insurance is protection from risk, not a payment plan and only exists that way in the extremely controlled environment that is our health care system.
So, the choice is do we alter the socialized system we have in a socialized way or do we stick with the socialized system in place? A person's answer most likely has to do with their existing coverage and neither offer a solution.
Your suggestion about trimming waste of government as a source of funds is an excellent suggestion. problem is, neither side is looking for a practical solution.
In an imperfect world, imperections in systems of health care, economy, and government will exist. We can't make things perfect, but we must make them better. Wealth doesn't determine health or life; but it does largely determine quality of care. The rich will always get better care no matter what system. Just as they will always eat better and take nicer vacations and have things that make their lives "better". But wiser people recognize that life is about quality, about family, about relationships, and about being happy regardless one's situation. Should we not allow rich people to access better doctors? I'm guessing that is not what you are suggesting, but many people are taking that attitude about all this and it makes me sick. (And I'm a poor grad student who has the most basic, cheap coverage imaginable.)
I'm not saying keep everything the same, especially when it comes to things like you mentioned (medicare/medicaid), but I am saying that we have the best system on earth. Now where do we go from here to make it even better? There are free market solutions to our problems that can improve costs. To just say the typical cop-out "but no one is serious about changing" will get us nowhere. I think NOW is the time to rally the troops, to educate our family and neighbors, and to harness this groundswell of disgust with the status quo in Washington in order to effect REAL change. Conservatives like myself want the same thing it seems you do (assuming you are a libertarian or something else like that), so lets work together and spread the word and hold elected officials come 2010 (and more importantly, beyond 2010).
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-08-20 06:42:59
Hi RJ,
No, healthcare is not a right it is an unbounded need. The political trick leftists use to garner support is to convince voters that rights and needs are the same thing...oh wait, it isn't just leftists, it is leftists, rightists, centrists, statists and liberatarians...they all use the same tools of manipulation in my view.
I'll be publishing an article in the next few days on this topic. Stemming from an earlier exchange with Gene over his hypothetical "last parcel of land" scenario, I point out the flaws in traditional perspectives about rights and how those flaws cause the liberty movement to pursue the red herring of inalienable rights instead of focusing on the defense of liberty...which is the ability to exercise rights, ALL rights.
The divide and conquer tactic of labeling this right and that right then making each one a separate political topic is a fools game. Forget about the list of supposed rights and focus on defending liberty instead and all the debate of what is a right and what is not will be decided along the way by what individuals choose to exercise or not.
Calling something a "right" is only a tool for emotional manipulation of potential voters. If there are restrictions on the liberty to exercise that so-called right the it is not a right but an entitlement. Even the so-called "right to life" is a sham unless individuals have the liberty to choose whether or not to exercise it.
To me the right to "life" [we are alive!] is the right to not be denied "life saving" treatment in the name of economics. I see this as not only an expression of economic choice but one of force, no matter the side of the answer one is on. And this is the "only" health" care question I see. I think anyone's ideas on the health issue should begin there and from your article, I think we agree on the answer.
Other than that, like you say the argument becomes a liberal/conservative argument over health policies, level of care, social status,etc. and that's where the issue becomes clouded with ideology and political agenda. If we all answered the basic question, "should life saving care be given, no matter the financial considerations, or should it be withheld?", the rest of the issue is immaterial.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-08-20 09:08:49
Hi RJ,
Gene has defined the "right to life" as an entitlement that one person can force others to honor and then gone further to make that force powerful enough to impose the unstated clause, AT ANY COST.
Under this paradigm, it becomes the obligation for every human being to devote the entire output of their productivity toward keeping each and every other human being alive for as many microseconds as is technically and medically possible.
This isn't reality. The fact is that no life can be saved. They can only be extended. Gene's approach recognizes no distinction between extending a 105 yr old coma patient's life by a day and extending a 10 yr old cancer patient's life by a decade. Under Gene's definition of rights, it is incumbent upon every living individual to ensure that no expense is denied for either of these endeavors.
Sorry Gene but this is just plain silly. Until you are willing to address the question: At what cost? I can't take your views on this topic seriously in the least.
That is kind of what we do now, for those that are selected!
I agree that what you stated is silly.
my point is simply that if we deny life saving treatment, that we are making an economical choice to allow life to end for those who are unable to afford care [while those who have the means may choose life]. So, in that sense we are forcing our collective economic choice on those with no economic choice, just as forced contribution is also force. To make either choice, we should own up to it.
here's a very simplyfied example. a car hits a person of low economic means and severs their leg. they lay bleeding in the street. do you deny care because of economics or ideology? do you force all to contribute for the care and stop the bleeding?
your point about at "what cost" is really the next and a great point. but the basic question needs to be answered first. if the answer is no care, then we don't need to discuss the cost aspect at all.
i have no authority to say at "what cost", and at some point along the spectrum, it becomes an extrememly difficult question. Still, without this specific knowledge, I still know my answer is stop the bleeding.
Posted By: Donna Maskell
Date: 2009-08-20 12:44:28
I believe the Constitutional right to life (and liberty and the pursuit of happiness) was meant to say that the government could not deprive you of life, etc., not that life couldn't be taken from you inadvertently due to bad luck or unwise decisions. No health care or insurance will help if you fall off a cliff anf die, or are run over by a semi and die. Medical professionals cannot bring the dead back to life (after they have been dead for 8 minutes, I think it is -- too much brain damage. I may have the time wrong.).
Not getting health care insurance on your own because you are too poor is bad luck. Not getting it because you would rather buy more "toys" is an unwise decision. Not getting it because you are an illegal alien is a hint that you should go back home. This leave pre-existing conditions, which are bad luck.
Since anyone can get emergency teatment, I see no reason to turn the system topsy-turvy to cover the unlucky and unwise, who can be helped in other ways. I like the idea of catastrophic insurance. But that's just me.
I think "rights" are only of the natural kind which anyone can agree on. Life, Liberty, Private property, pursuit of happiness.
Healthcare being a "right" requires someone to enforce it. People might decide not to be doctors if they're told they have to take what is offered. Then the state would have to decide to tell people that they will become doctors, which requires force. Soon the state will have to force people to work in that industry even as it fails.
In my mind, anything that requires force, is probably not the right way to go.
I think this kind of stuff has been tried before, with poor results. I don't understand the thinking of "progressives".
Posted By: Publius Huldah
Date: 2009-10-12 10:43:05
Friend, R.J., I am a retired lawyer & philosopher and write on the Constitution at
http://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/
I posted on this yesterday and also discuss the nature of, and origin of "rights". I promise it is worth reading and, it is concise! Please read & let me know what you think.
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