No, Health Care Isn't a Right

As the national debate over health care reform continues to rage, I'm interested in offering up my own views about one part of the debate: the idea that "health care" is a basic human "right" that our government owes each and every one of its citizens. This is an assertion that I've heard some of my liberal friends and family members make in recent months.

While I don't doubt the benign motives or good intentions of those who have made such claims, it's important to point out the problems with framing the debate over health care reform in this way.

As our Founders understood it, human beings are naturally endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among them are, as the Declaration of Independence states, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are the rights that any government, to be considered legitimate, must be able to protect.

What's important to note is that these rights are negative in nature. That is, individuals have a right NOT to be murdered- a right to "life." Human beings have a right to pursue their happiness free FROM unreasonable interference- a right to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Government is instituted to ensure that these rights are protected- that men are able to live and reap the fruits of their labor by lawfully accumulating private property.

The language of positive rights- a right to health care, a right to a home, a right to an automobile, etc.- is entirely divorced from the Founders' understanding of government and rights. The Founders were focused on equality of opportunity...the idea that every individual should have a CHANCE, that every human being should be allowed to engage in the QUEST for happiness. They understood that attempts to legislate equality of condition, to make everyone roughly equal by having the government redistribute wealth (as Barack Obama put it during the campaign, "spread the wealth around") were futile, unfair, and destructive.

As soon as people begin to accept that one of government's proper functions is to take from some and give to others, you open the door to corruption and you set in motion a vicious cycle of dependency. As soon as you create a bloc of voters that receive things from the government without paying anything into the system, you've created a monster. Of course these dependents are going to vote politicians into office who plunder the "rich" (but in reality, the hard-working upper-middle and middle classes too) while paying lip service to "social justice" and "equality." The dependents will keep voting for the same politicians, and the politicians will keep expanding entitlement programs to buy more and more votes.

But back to rights. Rights, as our Founders understood them, do not involve taking from one person and giving to another. Yet that is precisely what creating a universal, government-run health care system would entail.

All Americans have a universal, natural right to an equal opportunity to purchase health insurance. But government does not owe us health insurance, just as it does not owe us a house or a car or a television set. Government owes us freedom FROM things...freedom from interference, freedom from oppression, freedom from murder.

These thoughts are meant to convey my philosophical opposition to a government-run health care system, which is the natural result of the fantasy that health insurance is a basic, universal human right. Real reform should aim at increasing consumer choice, strengthening the doctor-patient relationship and weakening the influence of third parties, and by doing this, we can bring down the cost of health care. Those are the sorts of reforms we need. We DO NOT need another enormously expensive entitlement program.

I will add one more thought: the problem with government-run health care is that taxpayers are FORCED to subsidize insurance for other people...even if these other people choose an unhealthy lifestyle by, for instance, not exercising or eating fatty foods. Sorry folks- if you choose to become morbidly obese or you choose to smoke cigarettes, I don't want my hard-earned money going toward your health insurance. I'll take care of me and my own, you take care of you and your own.