The right to health care
We are born to be healthy and lead productive lives. Otherwise, the unalienable rights endowed by our Creator -- "among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" -- amount only to meaningless puffery. Without health, life cannot endure with sufficient quality as to allow either liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
Visit a nursing home or a shelter for disabled persons, and you will see that health is a necessary prerequisite for essential liberty and for any pursuit of happiness worthy of the phrase. In such iconic settings where illness is so obvious, you will also see liberties curtailed (among them, for example, freedom of movement and personal decision making) and happiness pursued not at all or only on the most limited terms.
The early evolution of our country's political principles underscores the fact that health is "among these" unalienable rights found in our Declaration of Independence. Those rights were first enumerated by the English writer John Locke, who wrote that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." Additionally, the first article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776, guaranteed not just the pursuit of happiness but its obtainment, and by direct extension, the right to health: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."
Opponents of government-sponsored health care argue that health is something no government can guarantee for a given individual at a given time, or for any individual in perpetuity. They say government cannot magically cure all disease or open the spigot on the Fountain of Youth, even if the law were to mandate it. But this is smoke and mirrors, and a straw man argument against the right to health care.
Certainly, it is true that government cannot exceed the bounds of medicine and physics, nor can it extend more health or years to a person than he or she is given potential for at birth. Continuing life or bolstering health through extraordinary technical means is neither fiscally nor medically possible in many cases.
But there exists a realm of the practical and pragmatic, where fiscal and moral imperatives intersect. At this point in time and history, government can and should guarantee that all citizens have a right to quality, affordable health care. Here, now, in the realm of medicine that includes guaranteed access and treatment considered effective and medically advisable.
There are opponents of government-sponsored health care who say it would socialize medicine by transferring money from wealthier individuals to pay for the care of poorer individuals. The say the benefits of such a plan would accrue to irresponsible individuals while unfairly taxing more responsible citizens.
But this is an attack on the system of taxation itself, which government employs at all levels to fund projects and programs that benefit society as a whole. The common defense is funded this way, as is education, as are sanitation systems. Most of us pay an unequal portion to fund expensive bridges that are over-designed not for our personal vehicles but for the load-bearing capacity needed to support commercial trucks. In fact, everything about government is socialized, if by that, one means transferring wealth from certain individuals to benefit others.
Take it a step further and realize that America itself has been socialized since before its inception as a nation, for wealth has always been transferred through the market from the hands of the many to the hands of the few.
I will not recite the litany of complaints against our current system of privatized health care. Nor will I extoll in detail the comparatively low cost and highly praised government health programs already in place.
But I will remind opponents that more than 47 million of your neighbors and friends and relatives -- American citizens all -- are currently without health care; that millions more lack sufficient coverage to forestall death and impoverishment; and that if health care is not given its place as an unalienable human right, tomorrow these opponents and their posterity could be among the unexpectedly injured or ill who expend their last resources to no avail and find no solace in their pursuit of Happiness.
Visit a nursing home or a shelter for disabled persons, and you will see that health is a necessary prerequisite for essential liberty and for any pursuit of happiness worthy of the phrase. In such iconic settings where illness is so obvious, you will also see liberties curtailed (among them, for example, freedom of movement and personal decision making) and happiness pursued not at all or only on the most limited terms.
The early evolution of our country's political principles underscores the fact that health is "among these" unalienable rights found in our Declaration of Independence. Those rights were first enumerated by the English writer John Locke, who wrote that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." Additionally, the first article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776, guaranteed not just the pursuit of happiness but its obtainment, and by direct extension, the right to health: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."
Opponents of government-sponsored health care argue that health is something no government can guarantee for a given individual at a given time, or for any individual in perpetuity. They say government cannot magically cure all disease or open the spigot on the Fountain of Youth, even if the law were to mandate it. But this is smoke and mirrors, and a straw man argument against the right to health care.
Certainly, it is true that government cannot exceed the bounds of medicine and physics, nor can it extend more health or years to a person than he or she is given potential for at birth. Continuing life or bolstering health through extraordinary technical means is neither fiscally nor medically possible in many cases.
But there exists a realm of the practical and pragmatic, where fiscal and moral imperatives intersect. At this point in time and history, government can and should guarantee that all citizens have a right to quality, affordable health care. Here, now, in the realm of medicine that includes guaranteed access and treatment considered effective and medically advisable.
There are opponents of government-sponsored health care who say it would socialize medicine by transferring money from wealthier individuals to pay for the care of poorer individuals. The say the benefits of such a plan would accrue to irresponsible individuals while unfairly taxing more responsible citizens.
But this is an attack on the system of taxation itself, which government employs at all levels to fund projects and programs that benefit society as a whole. The common defense is funded this way, as is education, as are sanitation systems. Most of us pay an unequal portion to fund expensive bridges that are over-designed not for our personal vehicles but for the load-bearing capacity needed to support commercial trucks. In fact, everything about government is socialized, if by that, one means transferring wealth from certain individuals to benefit others.
Take it a step further and realize that America itself has been socialized since before its inception as a nation, for wealth has always been transferred through the market from the hands of the many to the hands of the few.
I will not recite the litany of complaints against our current system of privatized health care. Nor will I extoll in detail the comparatively low cost and highly praised government health programs already in place.
But I will remind opponents that more than 47 million of your neighbors and friends and relatives -- American citizens all -- are currently without health care; that millions more lack sufficient coverage to forestall death and impoverishment; and that if health care is not given its place as an unalienable human right, tomorrow these opponents and their posterity could be among the unexpectedly injured or ill who expend their last resources to no avail and find no solace in their pursuit of Happiness.
Advertisement
1. "Visit a nursing home or a shelter for disabled persons, and you will see that health is a necessary prerequisite "
- just like Obama and the Special Olympics, aren't you?
What follows from this utter stupidity is the conclusion that those who are disabled (by birth, by a war wound, or an accident) are no longer able to obtain happiness. Why not finish them off then, since they can't obtain American Dream.
2. "Additionally, the first article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776, guaranteed not just the pursuit of happiness but its obtainment, and by direct extension, the right to health:"
- Apart from the rather obvious distortion of what that paragraph means, you argument is also ridiculous on the merits. Locke and your quote talk about the right to be unharmed by another.
3. Let's assume for a second that you have the "right to health".
Does that mean that this right is taken away from you when get heart disease because you eat too much bacon? And who took it away, bacon?
Does that mean that you forfeit this right when you start smoking, knowing the risks?
Does that mean that if you have genetic baldness your rights have been violated? By whom?
What does the "right to health" even mean?? And how can you ensure everyone has equal right to health when you cannot guarantee equal outcome?
4. It gets even more interesting when you begin to substitute the "right to health" with the Government obligation to provide healthcare.
The interesting part is that the Government didn't provide healthcare for the vast majority of the existence of this country. Medicare was supposed to be a small program at its inception, but, like all government programs, it's eating most of our healthcare spending today and about to eat a trillion bucks more, once expanded into a national system.
5. In that context just above, the best part must be this gem: "realize that America itself has been socialized since before its inception as a nation".
I don't know what you're smoking, but I want some. We must have been socialized really badly or this socialism business is really not worth it since we still can't fix it in 2009.
6. Thanks for the reminder about the amount of uninsured. The true reason why 47 million people are without healthcare is because they can't afford the insurance premiums.
The problem with healthcare in this country has nothing to do with socialism, right to health or any other baloney argument you're trying to push.
We have state government monopolies on health insurance regulations, with different rules, mandates and coverage requirements, then we turn around and accuse the insurance companies of being mini-mopolies.
We provide long patent limits, then complain that Americans like expensive drugs, not cheap generics ($90 billion annually)
We have the most expensive medical education in the world, then blame doctors for trying to pay their student loans back ($250,000 minimum)
These three problems are easier to fix than introducing socialized medicine.
But the truth is - you want the socialist system more than you want to fix healthcare, because you like everyone treated like another brick in the wall, to the lowest common denominator, so the poor continue to be poor and the rich become as poor as you can get away with.
That's all.
July 4, 2009 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Happy to engage you here, Lalo. I'll try to refrain from the techniques of insult and misrepresentation you employ in your arguments.
1. If you wouldn't truncate my statements, they might seem more self-evident rather than extremist. I clearly state that without health, liberties and happiness are diminished -- not abolished, as you suggest. Special Olympics have nothing to do with it. Nor does euthanasia.
2. Nothing in the third paragraph distorts the intent of the authors. Locke wrote "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." The Virginia Declaration of Rights extended the concept to include "obtaining happiness and safety," shortly before the Declaration of Independence iterated these rights as among those which government has an obligation to protect. In other words, government is the final guarantor of these rights.
3. Each of us has the inherent right to infringe on or waive our own freedoms and rights. Not saying it's wise or moral to do so, just that we do have free will to use our rights as we please. Don't like free speech? Shut up all you want.
4. The "right to health" is hollow without access to the care required to preserve it. The fact that health care has been an overlooked right so far is no more important than an argument for preserving slavery based on its institutionalization for the country's first nine decades.
5. This one seems to be one of your non-sequiturs. What I'm smoking probably would not satisfy your needs.
6. You provide no evidence for your assertion that fixing the three things you mention would fix health care in the same comprehensive ways now being written in the House bill.
The truth is, I want every American in the same boat when it comes to health care, because a two-or-more-tiered system apportions the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in separate and unequal boats, where the wealthy get the Carnival cruise of health care and the rest of us get the dingy.
July 5, 2009 2:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
1 and 2. "I clearly state that without health, liberties and happiness are diminished -- not abolished,"
- We have natural rights, the entitlements which cannot be taken away from a person by anyone whatsoever, and according to Locke include life, property and liberty. On life, Locke specifically spoke about the right to have life once it's created. I understand your point about not "harming another" but it's clearly a point about order and safety in a community, not a life to be treated with someone else's money.
- We also have legal rights, or civil rights, that protect people from the power of government and state and allow them to participate in civil and political life of the state. These include things like a right to a fair trial, protection from discrimination, freedom of speech, right to vote, etc.
None of these rights can be abolished by an individual him/herself, because they all rest on the concept of everyone being created equal and being free from tyranny of the government.
If a right can be dimished (as you claim "the right to health" can be), can you please give me examples of how a right to life can be diminished. Or a right to vote. Not taken away illegally by the state, but diminished.
It can't because inseparate rights are like an "on/off" switch, and as far as an individual is concerned this switch is always on.
Your obvious confusion comes from the fact that you misunderstand the concept of rights. We have these rights because we're humans living in social groups, not because some liberal invented them (they didn't) and we can invent a few more.
4. WHO defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".
In other words, health in that definition may very well be that "happiness" that we are entitled to pursue.
If this is the definition of health you subscribe to, then you are asking the state to provide you with happiness and social well-being. But that's YOUR job, not state's job.
If your definition of health is disease or infirmity, then for the life of me I cannot see how treating these, especially if caused by your own behavior, is a right of any kind.
What I'm pointing to, and what you're missing, is the concept of personal responsibility for one's actions. You haven't explained how exactly this fits into and interacts with the "right to health".
As for providing evidence - I hold this to be so self-evident, that it's clear, once again, that your liberal friends in Congress are more concerned with changing a social system and obtaining additional voting block then fixing problems with healthcare.
July 5, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let me just address the only valid point you make here: My omission of a critical phrase in this sentence: "I clearly state that without health, liberties and happiness are diminished -- not abolished, as you suggest."
This should have read: "I clearly state that without health, the ability to exercise liberties and pursue happiness are diminished -- not abolished, as you suggest."
July 5, 2009 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
You remind me of those who invent something and then stick fingers into their ears and chant "right to healthcare, right to healthcare" to avoid arguing it.
Fine, let's leave it at that.
I hope the government option fails, along with cap-trade. Any "option" built on the premise that "we will raise your taxes and in return cut your treatments" deserves to fail.
July 5, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ripper, I really like that you reference how people have no healthcare, not health insurance. The issue is not about insurance, it is about health. It is appalling that our health has become a commodity and THAT is the root of the problem with health our poor healthcare system. It's a health insurance system. Always willing to take your money but always questioning whether to provide a service. In fact, health insurance provides no service, just funds to obtain that service and a negotiated rate at which the service is provided.
July 5, 2009 2:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are on to something. We have a right to liberty. As a result we have a right to an attorney. We have a right to life and pursuit of happiness. But we don't have a right to a doctor?
That argument should be enough, right where it stands. But, there's more.
How about, in addition to the above, we had already paid for the right to a doctor?
This OECD study shows (see top graph on page 13) that the U.S. government already pays out more money, per capita, in health care expenditures than any other country, except Norway.
This study suggest that we are alreay paying for universal single payer health insurance, we just aren't getting it.
So in addition to the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happyness, we have payment. Can we attach a right to a doctor now?
What this study suggests, is that if we flipped a switch tomorrow, and implemented, say, France's vaulted system, Government outlays for health care might actually go down.
This suggest that we are already paying for universal health care insurance, we just aren't getting it because we've saddled ourselves with the most inefficient system possible that could still be called a system.
50 million of our fellow Americans are without health insurance - even though that OECD study suggest that they have already paid for it through their taxes. Is that right?
Those 50 million can be expected to have to surrender their liberty, and if necessary, their life, to defend the property rights and interest of the other 250 million people should a war occur during their prime years. Given such a duty, it seems granting a right to health care hardly seems excessive or extraordinary - especially since we are already paying enough for that right to be granted.
18,000 of our fellow Americans are likely to die in any given year because they lack health insurance - even though they may have already paid for it. Is that right?
18,000 is six times the number of people who died on 9/11 or at Pearl Harbor.
The OECD study suggest that a single payer system would be free because it's already paid for. In fact it suggest that we could expect cost to go down, meaning we could get a small tax cut out of it.
"Public Option" then shouldn't be the compromise position that Obama is pushing. "Private Option" should be the compromise position.
Because it's so efficient, and so cheap, and we are already paying for it, the government should flip a switch tomorrow, and everybody would be covered by public health insurance. But, if you like your private health insurance, you can keep it. It would be redundant, but it would be your "option."
The rest of us could go into work on Monday, have our health care benefit monetized and rolled into our pay check. The resulting increase in purchasing power would lift aggregate demand; the increased in efficiency would make American products more competitive increasing jobs and employment; the reduced outlays could provide a small tax cut; the combined effect of all of this means that "private option" could allow us to walk out of this most severe economic depression in a fortnight.
All of that is being put on a shelf so that corporations participating in various health care related markets can earn oligopoly and monopoly rents (profits).
While three thousand of our fellow Americans dying because of actions committed by the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor or the Al Qaida attacks on 9/11 are an abomination that must be avenged by multi-trillion dollar wars, 18,000 Americans dying for the sake of a few corporations earning monopoly and oligipoly profits, year-in and year-out, is somehow a perfectly acceptable cost for the nation to bear.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? At times, this country seems more like a plantation than it does a democracy.
July 5, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
A masterful presentation, Tim, of the case for public health care. Thanks for this. You've added much to the discussion and refined some of my points.
July 5, 2009 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink