Is Health Care a "Right"?
I'm not sure that there is a "right" to health care. Rights are things that we say we are born with, that we secure for ourselves by force if necessary. Rights are things that the government will enforce at the point of a gun. If a child is born in a tin roofed shack in Eastern Kentucky, will the govenment force a doctor to go out to the house and give it a "well baby" check-up? If no one volunteers to be doctors, will the government force people to become doctors against their will? Doctors are quitting all over the country, because tort lawyers are driving up the cost of practice to where it isn't worth it. Do doctors have to subjugate their interest in providing for their family to the interest of someone who can't afford to pay for care but can file a lawsuit if something goes wrong? Are we going to have police that force doctors to practice medicine?
We will send a policeman to protect your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness from the deliberate act of another human being, because that is your right. We will use force to protect each other within certain parameters. But if you want protection from the effects of accident, lifestyle, genetics or age, you need to pay that price yourself. We have helped provide protections of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness to people all around the world. Is it our duty to provide health care also?
We pay property taxes to support the police and firemen that protect our property. The zoning commission and building inspector have functions related to protecting property values and rights. The tax is in proportion to the value of the property. Property insurance premiums are in relation to the risk and the cost of repair/replacement.
Health care is not free. Someone has to develop the drugs. It's hard work. Testing them is risk-laden. Doctors go to school for a long time. They deserve to be compensated for their amassed education and experience. Medical equipment is expensive. Has to be terribly clean and precisely accurate.
How can you have a right to someone elses labor, knowledge, and property? If we treat your health as we do your real estate, then your taxes or premiums will have to be based on your risk and your value. That's a hard one. Who determines the value of a human being? But risk - that's precisely how life/health insurance is done.
If Joe Marshall doesn't have health coverage for himself, it's because he failed himself. He didn't save as much as he should have so that he could cover the premiums and he didn't have permanent coverage. In my youth, I spent many dollars foolishly. I wish I had them now, but wishing does not make it so. But whatever I have, Joe wants the government to take from me because he didn't provide for himself. Joe believes that he has a right to my property and yours and that if you try to keep it from him, the IRS or State should send cops to evict you from your house at the point of a gun so that your house can be sold to pay for his medical care. That's what happens when someone can't or refuses to pay taxes. The tax is enforced at the point of a gun if necessary. Joe thinks his need trumps your property rights.
The National Guard has been used to enforce civil rights. If a state refused to incorporate a universal healthcare system, would we send in the National Guard? Are we willing to force people to provide their Labor, Knowledge and Property either directly from the medical profession or from surrogate "taxpayers"?
I know that it seems heartless to say that if someone doesn't have assets, they might die. But that is the reality almost everywhere else in the world. If health care is a human right, should we distribute all of our doctors to Africa where they are needed more urgently?
No, I don't think this works. You deserve the health care you can afford. If you can't afford it, then family must provide. If family can't then perhaps charity. But I'd hate to have a cop come up and tell me to do open heart surgery because the man in the next room has a right to an operation and my experience skinning animals makes me the best qualified surgeon.
And this accusation that there is a war on the poor? That crock is getting old. The war on the poor is the psychological campaign that keeps them in poverty by leading them to believe that they have a right to consume without producing. The poor in America did a lot better from 1940 to 1964 than they did after the advent of the Great *couch, cough* Society. You cannot have a right that cannot be shared by all simultaneously. We cannot all simutaneously sit idle and consume, Someone must produce. Therefore welfare is not a right. It is charity at best and theft the rest of the time.
We will send a policeman to protect your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness from the deliberate act of another human being, because that is your right. We will use force to protect each other within certain parameters. But if you want protection from the effects of accident, lifestyle, genetics or age, you need to pay that price yourself. We have helped provide protections of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness to people all around the world. Is it our duty to provide health care also?
We pay property taxes to support the police and firemen that protect our property. The zoning commission and building inspector have functions related to protecting property values and rights. The tax is in proportion to the value of the property. Property insurance premiums are in relation to the risk and the cost of repair/replacement.
Health care is not free. Someone has to develop the drugs. It's hard work. Testing them is risk-laden. Doctors go to school for a long time. They deserve to be compensated for their amassed education and experience. Medical equipment is expensive. Has to be terribly clean and precisely accurate.
How can you have a right to someone elses labor, knowledge, and property? If we treat your health as we do your real estate, then your taxes or premiums will have to be based on your risk and your value. That's a hard one. Who determines the value of a human being? But risk - that's precisely how life/health insurance is done.
If Joe Marshall doesn't have health coverage for himself, it's because he failed himself. He didn't save as much as he should have so that he could cover the premiums and he didn't have permanent coverage. In my youth, I spent many dollars foolishly. I wish I had them now, but wishing does not make it so. But whatever I have, Joe wants the government to take from me because he didn't provide for himself. Joe believes that he has a right to my property and yours and that if you try to keep it from him, the IRS or State should send cops to evict you from your house at the point of a gun so that your house can be sold to pay for his medical care. That's what happens when someone can't or refuses to pay taxes. The tax is enforced at the point of a gun if necessary. Joe thinks his need trumps your property rights.
The National Guard has been used to enforce civil rights. If a state refused to incorporate a universal healthcare system, would we send in the National Guard? Are we willing to force people to provide their Labor, Knowledge and Property either directly from the medical profession or from surrogate "taxpayers"?
I know that it seems heartless to say that if someone doesn't have assets, they might die. But that is the reality almost everywhere else in the world. If health care is a human right, should we distribute all of our doctors to Africa where they are needed more urgently?
No, I don't think this works. You deserve the health care you can afford. If you can't afford it, then family must provide. If family can't then perhaps charity. But I'd hate to have a cop come up and tell me to do open heart surgery because the man in the next room has a right to an operation and my experience skinning animals makes me the best qualified surgeon.
And this accusation that there is a war on the poor? That crock is getting old. The war on the poor is the psychological campaign that keeps them in poverty by leading them to believe that they have a right to consume without producing. The poor in America did a lot better from 1940 to 1964 than they did after the advent of the Great *couch, cough* Society. You cannot have a right that cannot be shared by all simultaneously. We cannot all simutaneously sit idle and consume, Someone must produce. Therefore welfare is not a right. It is charity at best and theft the rest of the time.
posted by ironcross11 | 4:15 PM
1 Comments:
A guy I respected once told me that there were two kinds of "Rights."
-"Inalienable rights,"
and
-"Bullshit rights."
The simple way to tell the difference was to apply the following litmus test:
Will your exercising this "right" cause a loss or an infringment of someone else's rights?
By this litmus test a whole host of so-called rights are revealed as bullshit. The right to freedom from religion, which silences believers and marginalizes them from public life. The right to live with the (imaginary) peace of mind some people think they'll have if their town has an ordinance banning private gun ownership. The right to Gay Marriage, which undermines the basic unit of our society, the family. The right to abortion, which steals the right to life, liberty, and happiness of BOTH the mother and her dead baby.
Likewise, the so-called right to health care can and will lead to infringments on those who will be forced to pay into it, and on everone else who will lose their (heh) right to choose. In Canada, well-funded (by taxes) supporters of the tax-supported medical plan zealously attack anyone who tries to provide medical services outside the government rationing system.
I do mean a rationing system. I am every day amazed at the number of ingorant people I meet, who think the government's money-supply is limitless. Once you reduce health care to a single national HMO (the government) the ONLY way to limit overhead is by rationing. They won't be able to limit access to services- it'll be a right. Therefore the only choice left to the government will be waiting lists.
Need a heart-bypass? Cancer surgery? MRI? In Canada the waiting lists are months long.
So much for your right to life...
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