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Political
philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas
have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus
goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It
might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming
“rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might
seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like
education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little
further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the
community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept
those ideas.
First of all,
other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have
bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a
“right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or
others, to serve you.
Obviously, if
healthcare providers were suddenly considered outright slaves to
healthcare consumers, our medical schools would quickly empty. As the
government continues to convince us that healthcare is a right instead
of a good, it also very generously agrees to step in as middle
man. Politicians can be very good at making it sound as if healthcare
will be free for everybody. Nothing could be further from the
truth. The administration doesn’t want you to think too much about how
hospitals will be funded, or how you will somehow get something for
nothing in the healthcare arena. We are asked to just trust the
politicians. Somehow it will all work out.
Universal
Healthcare never quite works out the way the people are led to believe
before implementing it. Citizens in countries with nationalized
healthcare never would have accepted this system had they known upfront
about the rationing of care and the long lines.
As bureaucrats
take over medicine, costs go up and quality goes down because doctors
spend more and more of their time on paperwork and less time helping
patients. As costs skyrocket, as they always do when inefficient
bureaucrats take the reins, government will need to confiscate more and
more money from an already foundering economy to somehow pay the
bills. As we have seen many times, the more money and power that
government has, the more power it will abuse. The frightening aspect of
all this is that cutting costs, which they will inevitably do, could
very well mean denying vital services. And since participation will be
mandatory, no legal alternatives will be available.
The government
will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more
and more to the government’s tune. Having to subject our health to
this bureaucratic insanity and mismanagement is possibly the biggest
danger we face. The great irony is that in turning the good of
healthcare into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy.
Instead of
further removing healthcare from the market, we should return to a true
free market in healthcare, one that empowers individuals, not
bureaucrats, with control of healthcare dollars. My bill HR 1495 the
Comprehensive Healthcare Reform Act provides tax credits and medical
savings accounts designed to do just that.
1 Comments in Response to Healthcare is a Good, Not a Right - by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, M.D.
When did the word 'right' get switched with the word 'entitlement'? What this article seems to be referring to is 'entitlements', not 'rights'.
A right, simply put, is that which cannot be denied to you. An entitlement is something that is owed or granted to you.
When asking if we have a right to health care, or education, or anything else, you must ask yourself ; Can it be denied?
An education, for example cannot be denied, as no-one has the right to tell you are not allowed to pursue knowledge. That does not mean that you are entitled to an education. The same can be said for health care, you have a right to have health care, as no-one has the right to tell you that you cannot try to purchase it, but that does not mean you are entitled to health care.
It seems we have boxed ourselves into the Bill of Rights being our only rights.The ninth amendment states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."