We have been embroiled in this health care debate for months - years if you go back to Clinton, and decades if you go back to FDR. The progressives want to have health care to be a right. It isn't and never will be.
Health care is a product or a service. Health care insurance - often confused in this debate - is a service. Both are consumer choices. Buy them or don't buy them. Free choice.
Labeling them a right doesn't make them one. They are goods and services.
The entire debate belies the fact that they are not rights.
A right cannot be mandated. It cannot be regulated. It cannot be taxed or withdrawn. It cannot be priced - let alone having a tiered pricing structure. A right applies to everyone universally, regardless of age.
Hospital emergency rooms would need to increase the size of their staffs many times. Why should anyone have to wait to be treated if health care is a right? Why is anyone more important than anyone else?
In a disaster situation, a triage approach just wouldn't work because everyone would have the same right to health care - regardless of the severity of their injuries. Essentially, there would need to be a medical team for each injured person.
If it were a right, it would have to be constantly and continuously available. Rights don't just come and go. They don't maintain office hours. It a 24/7 thing.
In this argument about health care being a right, the main focus is just on the individual. If were really a right, what about the people who provide the health care services? What asures that they are available in sufficient quantity to attend to everyone's needs and how is this supply replenished and expanded? As a practical matter, this can't happen - another reason it is not a right.
Health care is not a right. Never has been. Never will be. If it can be legislated into existence, it is not a right. If it can be regulated or phased out of existence, it is not a right. If it has monetary value, it is not a right.
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I hear you Steve but at this point I would be happy to know what is really in the health care bill....one side tells you this the other side tells you that....let me see for myself....although I probably don't have time to read the millions of pages....
Dennis,
The simple fact is that the bill that the House is preparing to vote on does not exist in print. Pelois said pass it so we can see what's in it. I say don't pass it. :)
Steve
Steve how many people without insurance have cell phones and cable televison and probably internet service?
John,
Probably most. Remember insurance or even access to it is not a right, :)
Steve
Steve, I say more power to them. Let them continue jamming this down an unwilling public's throat. Then they'll get a civic lesson next fall about how democracy works.
I agree! My husband is retired after 31 years in municipal government. He had excellent health insurance while working. Now that he is retired, our health cost is killing us. We started out at about $6,000 a year five years ago. This year will be close to $10,000. I hate it! But even given that situation, I don't think that it's the governments responsibility to insure us. Do I wish health insurance were less expensive? Yes! Do I think the government is the best company to insure us? No!
Craig,
Very true except that we'll be stuck trying to repeal this egregious legislation. :)
Steve
Tammie,
We've gotten spoiled. We want our insurance to cover everything. Might be time for a few maverick companies to start up and just take care of the big ticket items. :)
Steve
IF Health Care is a "right" - then it would be appropriate for the government to use force to make a Doctor sacrifice a part of his/her life to provide care for someone. What kind of a "right" would that be?
What other "rights" do we have that requires someone to sacrifice in order for another person to exercise their "right"? I can't think of any.
Congratulations this post is now featured in the Silent Majority Group of Active Rain.
Steve, Thanks for an excellen it post, I've re-blogged it and added a video of Obama's cousin who is a doctor & strongly disagrees with the bill.
David,
You are correct. A right does not require the effort or work of anyone else - by definition. :)
Steve
Nicholas,
Thanks for the support and the feature. :)
Steve
Sara,
Thanks for the great comments and reblog. :)
Steve
It can't be a right... because it requires the servitude of another to make it happen.,.. that simple.
Lane,
Precisely. Thanks. :)
Steve
A right is something I enjoy, simultaneously with others, freely, and endowed by God, and my enjoyment costs nobody else anything.
Great Post, Steve! As was the other bills that come out of this congress that are controlled by the Democrats, it is completely agenda-driven. There is no real attempt to fix what is broken. Part of the reason that health care is so broken is due to the burden imposed on the system by the illegal alien population. The health care bill now passing through congress is just another way to use our tax dollars to buy more votes and to gather more power over us.
John,
All of that and the fact that this is not something the Congress is even authorized to do. :)
Steve
Jay,
Very well put. This is why a service or a privelege can never be a right. :)
Steve
The bill that isn't will be probably be voted on this week or next. The public will not see it and members of congress will not underestand it. If this is how our elected officials want to act, they will not be elected for much longer.
Steve,
I think medical care when you are injured is a right. I think mandatory health insurance paid for by tax payers is not a right. Elective medical and clogging the emergency room whenever you have the sniffles is not a right, but if you want to pay for it, it is a right.
Currently, if you are injured and taken to an emergency room, you are treated, and if you do not have insurance, you are billed. So the system works, and people get medical care in emergency situations.
Medical insurance could be said to be more in the lines of speculative investing. You are paying a lower fee now, in the eventuality that if you do require serious medical care in the future, you are covered. If you do not make this investment, and choose to spend you money on other things, then it is a choice you made, and your responsibility.
What has made medical insurance unaffordable is all the people that get it as a 'benefit' and go to the hospital and file a claim everytime they have the sniffles. I know this because I have spent a lot of times in emergency rooms as a minister in the past, and people abuse the services provided. I have seen people with open wounds have to wait in the emergency room while a physician is attending to someone with a headache or cough. Sorry, that is an abuse.
The problem we have is that we are a consumption based society, and people of today spend every dollar they make and do not plan for the future. They even spend their future money, and do not think about tomorrow. Buying medical insurance is thinking about tomorrow.
Steve,
There are rights which do require the actions of others.
Consider the following statement: "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
The right to life does not come by itself. We are not conceived unless others take action, we are not born unless we are carried in the womb, and we do not make it past our younger years without assistance.
The word "right" has many different contexts.
If we look at ourselves as individuals, then we might confer certain rights upon ourselves, but if we are looked at as members of a society, then we may confer a different set of rights upon ourselves.
We are members of a society, and whether our society is extremely complex or very simple in nature, it does require the actions of ourselves and of others.
If the society believes that a certain thing should be a right, then that certain thing, including "health care" could be considered to be a right.
Dale,
Don't count it done just yet. :)
Steve
Michael,
Again, wanting something to be a right doesn't make it so. If you are injured and far away from medical treatment, it cannot be a right because at that point you would be denied it by virtue of your location - and by definition, a right cannot be denied or abridged. :)
Steve
Ron,
Rights do not have different contexts. The are absolute and universal. They are not created, invented, wished into existence, or withdrawn. :)
Steve
You got it Steve, health care is not a right. The only reason I am for govt. spending on health care is for sick children and to take care of the old if their families can not afford it.
Larry,
And that's kind of in place now anyway. :)
Steve