By Stephen L. Hall
In a recent televised debate with Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders asked Mr. Cruz if health care was a right. Much to my disappointment, Cruz chose the diplomatic answer but successfully brought his point around to the fundamental flaw in Sander’s presumption without directly addressing the salient points.
Only a complete idiot with an economics and legal education which failed to reach beyond the level of a third grader would actually think that people have a right to health care in the manner in which Sanders obviously intended as a socialist claim of needs and wants.
He means, of course that you have a right to demand and receive health care services from the public at large because you exist, you are breathing and human. I’ll not debate these last two points with you and merely assume that you are actually human and breathing.
Taken to the extreme, if you have need of medical services, someone must perform those services, it is your “right”. Of course this defies the very definition of a right, but what happens if everyone refuses to provide these services? Oh, the government will pay? Okay, but what if those services are refused no matter how much of other people’s money the government offers?
After all, this is the very concept of a shortage writ large, the ultimate shortage of none. All the other arguments of wait listing and availability are just this same concept in small scale. So we take the money and market out of the question and just look at the abstract.
You see, if you have a right to a service, then the service provider can have no right of refusal. Their labor must be compelled against their will, by force. When you are forced to work, that is called slavery.
There are those who will pretend that it is not slavery because they are getting paid for their work, and well for it. But, have not slaves always been paid the necessities of life: food, clothing, and shelter? Did not a gentleman argue that the Southern slave owners in America could even save on these expenses if they just paid them even less in wages than the cost of these commodities, like the Yankees did the Irish up North?
Let us take it further and presume that no one wants to be a doctor or nurse under these conditions, hence there are no providers at all. The state would then be compelled, as with the old Soviet Union, to dictate to the workers what kind of education and employment they would have.
Fortunately, here in America, until the socialists take over, such slavery is, at least generally, prohibited by the 13th Amendment. Any decent child of eight or more recognizes the evil and foolishness of such a system of slavery. Socialists may get to be that smart eventually, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for it.
The very principle of a right, indeed any principle, can only be tested and understood at the extreme, don’t let people dissuade you as that is an argument which could never happen, because if a principle will not hold in the extreme, then it really isn’t a principle, merely a fuzzy guideline.
All of this, however, is not what I wanted to talk about. You already knew all of this as you are old enough to read and type and hold a civil conversation.
What I wanted to explore was this: What if we actually took Bernie Sanders at his word? Not the lunacy he means or intends when he utters those words, but rather the words themselves? What would a “Right of Health Care” actually mean to someone who actually knew and understood the meaning of the word “right”?
A right is the complete prohibition of government interference in the citizen’s exercise of the covered activity as a matter of absolute principle.
If I have a right of health care, and not of course a right to demand health care, then the government may not prevent me, as a citizen, in acquiring the health care that I desire. Interesting indeed.
The very function of the FDA is to authorize, that is to pick and choose, what medications and chemicals I am permitted to purchase, and prohibiting those which those few individuals think I should not have, possess, or use. I cannot have the right to health care if I have not the right to medication?
What about the BATFE? Alcohol, tobacco, and hemp regulated by the government are all traditional medicines used since before the dawn of civilization for people to care for their health. The very word “medicine” comes from the Gaelic “methaglin”, meaning a mead infused with herbs which was used to preserve the health care effects of those herbs when they were out of season. Who is the BATFE to deny us our choice in methaglins?
What about the “sin” taxes on those certain of these substances that the state permits us to have, particularly alcohol & tobacco? In the case of the production and refinement of that very alcohol this government has been fining, taxing, and putting people in jail since George Washington’s time in office. How is it even remotely possible that the government is taxing my rights and keeping me from the free exercise thereof?
E’er we move on from just the methaglins, as they are my right, as Bernie declares, how can the Patent Office issue patents on my chemical compounds and give exclusive rights to the production thereof to companies, even if it is to allow them to recoup their R&D investments, and secure a market share and even if it is for a limited time, those chemicals are my right! So this function of the Patent Office has got to go.
Of course, the very concept of a “lawful practice of medicine” through government approved medical licensing procedures clearly interferes with my right to seek whatever medical treatment I desire and from whomever I may seek to acquire it. The government is prohibited from interfering in my health care, and those doctor licensing boards, and every state has them, do that very thing.
Of course, as it is my right, then any and every medical procedure I want to have done, so long as someone is willing to do it, is my choice, my right of health care. How can people deprive me of my liberty merely because they deem me to be a danger to myself? Isn’t that my right? The anorexic, the suicidal, the Democrats, and other mental diseases might be treated however the would be patient deems best, but rights may be taken away if the person exercising those rights is deemed incompetent. So that objection would just be a straw man argument.
Then there are other issues which follow which are less clear.
Your rights stop where another person’s rights begin.
The right to an abortion, I mean privacy in your medical decisions, stops where the right of the other human creature’s right to life begins. That issue still doesn’t gain any clarity from a “right of health care”.
If a person has a right of health care, then they must, of necessity, have the right to refuse health care. So if a person refuses to immunize their children? I don’t mean on all various possible diseases, but even the most basic vaccines. But what exactly becomes the limits of the CDC? If a person like Typhoid Mary is contagious, then do they still have the right to refuse medical treatment, to refuse health care? Can they be deprived of liberty for the very action of exercising their Constitutional right of health care?
As you can see, it really is a complex issue that Sanders raises if you take him at his literal word and not the thoughtless idea he actually means when he utters those words. So, do we have a Right of Health Care? Do we have to rewrite our laws to eliminate agencies specifically enacted to interfere with such a right?
