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Healthcare is a Good, Not a Right

by Ron Paul

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.

Dr. Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas.

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Comments

Natural Rights:

The classic definition of "natural rights" are "life, liberty, and property", but these need to be expanded somewhat. They are rights of "personhood", not "citizenship". These rights are not all equally basic, but form a hierarchy of derivation, with those listed later being generally derived from those listed earlier.

Personal Security (Life):

(1) Not to be killed.
(2) Not to be injured or abused.

Personal Liberty:

(3) To move freely.
(4) To assemble peaceably.
(5) To keep and bear arms.
(6) To assemble in an independent well-disciplined militia.
(7) To communicate with the world.
(8) To express or publish one's opinions or those of others.
(9) To practice one's religion.
(10) To be secure in one's person, house, papers, vehicle, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
(11) To enjoy privacy in all matters in which the rights of others are not violated.

Private Property:

(12) To acquire, have and use the means necessary to exercise the above natural rights and pursue happiness, specifically including:
(1) A private residence, from which others may be excluded.
(2) Tools needed for one's livelihood.
(3) Personal property, which others may be denied the use of.
(4) Arms suitable for personal and community defense.
http://www.constitution.org/powright.htm
++++++++++++++++

I would think that the 'life' portion in the 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' by necessity includes health. You have cited natural law, does not natural law dictate that life is a right? Reason would dictate that ignoring a citizen who's life would be ended without health care would be against natural law. Or would you argue that unless a citizen can afford the prolonging of a life by adequate health care, that that life is forfeit? This argument has gone on for decades and it is time to stop promoting the insurance companies and promoting the private citizen, the American.

We should resolve now that the health of
this nation is a national concern; that
financial barriers in the way of attaining health
shall be removed; that the health of all it's
citizens deserves the help of all the nation.
Harry S. Truman

# posted at by EdgedInBlue

Ron Paul is really badly mangling this opportunity. It's sad to see. Unfortunately, we all have blind spots, most often on issues that benefit ourselves personally. I assume that his perspective as a doctor makes it difficult to see what should be right in front of his face.

Unfortunately for America, Ron Paul doesn't seem to think that we have serious problems with the present Health Care system. Despite the wealth of data that shows that Americans pay much higher prices for much worse health care and that many cannot even get needed health care, Ron Paul seems to think that a few tax credits will solve our problems.

Wake up.

The cause of Liberty is begging for someone with the resources and the credibility to stand up and offer America a Free Market solution.

What we have now is not it. Instead we are told to fear a government solution that will destroy the system we have.

The fact is that the Health Care System isn't working for the vast majority of citizens. We are being offered a change. A rational person when dealing with something that isn't working will try something else.

Right now there is only one choice of change. Where are the libertarians offering the better alternative? Ron Paul should be that person. Instead he sems to think that everything looks ok to him.

That's the wrong answer.

# posted at by Morgn

Ideas do have power, and we see today the results of one disastrous idea from the 1970's:

There's a lot of profit to be made by being the exclusive middle man between you and your doctor.

Our current health care system is the result of that idea. There is no choice, no free-market system. For most people, they have the choice between our employer's insurance or none at all... especially for those of us who are judged "uninsurable" due to pre-existing conditions.

There is no difference between what we have now, and universal, government-provided health care, except one: the middle-man rationing health care, and creating long lines (the line is very long if you're not allowed to get in line in the first place), won't be a bureaucrat defending the profit margins of huge corporations, but a government bureaucrat.

Of the two, I much prefer the government one.

There is another aspect to health care that needs to be considered. Health care by far resembles a social service like the police, fire department, or the armed forces, than it does a good, like a car, a watch, or even food and clothing.

It's there for when things go wrong. It's a part of our system of emergency services. We don't stop and ask ourselves, "Can I afford to call the police?" when we get robbed. We don't check our budget when our house is on fire. But that is what millions of Americans do when they have a lingering cough or are in pain, even when we have insurance.

And the costs are staggering. Beyond the personal cost (both to health, and the price of treatment) of delaying going to the doctor until your condition gets "really bad," there is also the cost to society.

Most of us can't tell the diference between a chest cold and the early stages of tuberculousis. But early detection of the latter can not only prevent a long and expensive treatment, but a TB epidemic as well.

Despite of all the horror stories about "rationed" health care and "long lines," it's rarely mentioned that these cases are the exception, and are usually in the treatment of rare conditions and diseases, not the rule.

Basic health care is usually suburub. Unlike our health care system, where we're discouraged from going to the doctor for "every silly little thing," they do have the option to going to the doctor whenver they don't feel well, and that your family doctor would have more freedom to order diagnostic tests. Which means early detection is the norm, not the exception.

Which also means that that poor unfortunate soul who's waiting a year for her cancer treatment may be in a better position than her American counterpart, who won't even GO to the doctor for another two years, when the discomfort becomes bad enough to "justify" going to the doctor in the first place.

Finally, just because universal government health care exists, doesn't mean that private health care will dissapear. We have universal government police protection, but private security firms, home security systems, and even privately-owned firearms still exist. It simply means that all these insurance corporations will have to compete against the government option, rather than enjoying the virtual monopoly they have today.

I think it's time to stop treating health care as a "good," and start treating it like the emergency service it is. I think it's time to get corporations whose business model is "take money to provide a service, and and then find any excuse to deny people that service" from between us and our doctors. I think its' time to stop our business as usual corporate managed sickness care, and get genuine health care.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing while expecting different results. Universal government health care may or may not be the sane choice, but we already know that "business as usual" is an insane choice.

# posted at by Daniel Melby

1. Health care IS working for the majority of the citizens. Over 300 million people have health care. 46 million are without health care, 25% are eligible for medicare/medicaid but haven't signed up, and 25% have the money to buy health insurance (a good) but choose not to.

2. One thing that is fact: Universal health care decreases specialized health practice and supports general practice. There is nothing wrong with general practice, except for the fact that you won't have a family doctor, and to see a specialist will take months. So what do we do in Canada? We just go to the emergency room for everything. Even a common cold. This costs our government a lot more money. The same will be true for Americans.

I respect your passion but I laugh at your ideology. Every human life is equally important. However, natural law, dictates a simple fact: People die. The fact that one does not have health insurance is not to say that another person is responsible for withholding the insurance-less man's liberty. American's have grown spoiled. You are wiling to waste your money on everything but you expect everything to be given to you. My countries health system is broken, and yours too shall break. 300 million insured is great.

3. Our mortality rate compared to America's is awful. Do some research. Look at breast cancer survival rate. This is all do to rationing of care.

Eat your fast foods. Smoke your tobacco. Then expect all to pay.

# posted at by Sean Shahrestani