Is health care a right?<\/p>\n
You can die without heath care, so it must be a right. Right?<\/p>\n
You can also die without food. Is food a right?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not likely to make much progress here — beyond name-calling — until we figure out what a Constitutional right IS.<\/p>\n
First, when we call the first 10 amendments to the Constitution the \u201cBill of Rights,\u201d we\u2019re being imprecise. They\u2019re really more a \u201cBill of Restrictions\u201d on government.<\/p>\n
Government doesn\u2019t \u201cgrant\u201d any rights. Rights are things we or our forebears were naturally free to do before the government was empaneled, liberties which all agreed at the founding this government shall not be allowed to \u201cinfringe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did you think the sixth amendment granted you a \u201cright\u201d to a jury trial? Go down to the courthouse and ask for your jury trial. They\u2019ll ask what crime you stand accused of. \u201cNo crime,\u201d you say, \u201cI just have a right to a jury trial; I\u2019m tired of waiting; I want mine now.\u201d<\/p>\n
You won\u2019t get it. What the amendment says is that government can\u2019t seize your stuff, put you in prison, even take your life, without granting you the opportunity to throw the question on a panel of 12 of your peers, fellow citizens not \u201cin government,\u201d who must agree unanimously with what the government wants to do. It\u2019s a \u201crestriction\u201d on the government.<\/p>\n
(Jury trial is the one provision in the Bill of Rights that creates the most definitional problems, since it would appear to be something that can only be \u201cprovided by government,\u201d though in fact Saxon warriors were sitting as jurors long before they had any courthouses or salaried judges. As currently enforced, moreover, my \u201cright\u201d to a jury trial does appear to impose a requirement on my innocent neighbors, who are conscripted to serve on the jury. In fact, though, this is more about our current government seeking to stack panels of dimwits unaware of their historic power to judge the law as well as the facts. There is no need for such coercion. Simply raise the juror\u2019s stipend. Plenty of retirees and those between jobs would volunteer to form our jury pools. They might even figure out they don\u2019t have to convict unless the judge lets them read the law for themselves, retaining the right to acquit on account of incomprehensibility.)<\/p>\n
We have a right to freedom of speech. Does this mean the government is empowered to tax our neighbors in order to buy us a microphone, a radio station, a printing press? No. It merely means government shall do nothing to shut us up.<\/p>\n
Does the \u201cright to bear arms\u201d mean the government has to provide me with a free machine gun? Actually, under the separate responsibility of the central government to help arm the militia, that\u2019s an interesting question. But for our purposes today, no, the Second Amendment imposes no duty on the government to seize money elsewhere to buy me guns — it simply means that, if I care to prioritize my resources so as to buy arms, the government has no legitimate power to limit me.<\/p>\n
A \u201cright\u201d is something I or my forefathers could do before we\/they created the current government. A \u201cright\u201d can\u2019t be something that can only be delivered by government action (since government is funded by taxes, which have to be grabbed from someone else), nor can my legitimate attempt to exercise a \u201cright\u201d create a situation in which government goons get to use force or coercion or the threat of same in order to seize something from someone else, or force an action on the part of someone else.<\/p>\n
So, again, do I have a \u201cright\u201d to health care? Of course I have a right to get a reasonable amount of exercise in order to try and preserve my health. But this neither grants the government any authority, nor imposes on it any duty, to buy me a trampoline or a treadmill.<\/p>\n
Of course I have a right to take vitamin supplements. But asserting this \u201cright\u201d neither empowers me to go down to the pharmacy and steal vitamins at gunpoint, nor does it grant the government any power to use force or threat of force to do this theft and looting FOR me.<\/p>\n
(If doing a thing is immoral, how can it be moral to delegate or deputize someone else to do it for you?)<\/p>\n
Similarly, while I suppose I have a \u201cright to eat\u201d — in the sense that government should not steal from my mouth or my family\u2019s the bread I\u2019ve grown or gathered or purchased with my labor (that\u2019s Jefferson) — the assertion of this \u201cright\u201d cannot grant government any power or duty to go steal me my food, or to tax from others the wealth needed to feed me, even if I\u2019m \u201cunderprivileged,\u201d \u201cat risk,\u201d whatever euphemism du jour you favor.<\/p>\n
By easy steps, we thus reach the question of whether I have the right to employ the services of a nurse, a physician, or a hospital. Of course I have the right to negotiate for those services, at a rate of payment agreeable to the provider. Once government gets out of the picture, I imagine installment payments might again become the norm. But to contend I have a \u201cright\u201d to such services without paying for them would violate the 13th amendment, since it would turn people foolish enough to have become medical professionals into de facto slaves.<\/p>\n
Nor is it much better to assert that government goons can order these medicos to treat me for lower fees than they would ask in the free market. This merely approaches the same slavery by smaller, incremental steps.<\/p>\n
This is not a merely theoretical objection. I have spoken to medical professionals who now advise their gifted children to go into other fields, rather than put up with the increasing government regulation of medicine. If you want to know where that\u2019s heading us, ask how many people flew from here to collectivist Russia in search of their fine medical care last year.<\/p>\n
Yes, you have a right to health care — as much as you can buy.<\/p>\n
You just don\u2019t have a right to steal it, or to hire bully-boys with government badges to steal it for you.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t like today\u2019s prices, demand that government get out of the business of regulating medicine, which drives up costs enormously. No such power is granted to any branch of government, anywhere in the Constitution, anyway.<\/p>\n
Even \u201chealth insurance\u201d would be vastly less costly if it were no longer \u201cpre-paid routine medical care,\u201d loaded up with state coverage mandates most of us don\u2019t need — if instead we were simply \u201callowed\u201d to buy high-deductible, catastrophe-only policies across state lines.<\/p>\n
Ask your insurance agent.<\/p>\n
Some will complain, \u201cOh Vin, you\u2019re being unrealistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fine, Explain to me, if we craft public policies designed to encourage and reward greed, avarice, envy, theft, and a sense of \u201centitlement\u201d — creating no incentive for people to work hard and save for a rainy day, in fact branding those who do such things \u201closers\u201d who will only see their savings grabbed to fund the \u201cneeds\u201d of the indolent — why we should then exhibit any shock or surprise when we find ourselves in a hell full of violent looters, who even when caught snarl, \u201cI wanted it, you greedheads have more than you need, and there\u2019s nothing you can do to me!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is health care a right? You can die without heath care, so it must be a right. Right? You can also die without food. Is food a right? We\u2019re not likely to make much progress here — beyond name-calling — until we figure out what a Constitutional right IS. First, when we call the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-cG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}