Hillary Clinton made a startling pronouncement when she announced her universal health care plan yesterday.
"Health care is a right, not a privilege," Mrs. Clinton said.
Her inclusion of health care among the rights delineated in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed in the Constitution would seem questionable -- if not erroneous -- if we the people weren't already inured to the ever-expanding list of rights "discovered" by politicians, advocacy groups and courts.
Doubtless, health care is a basic need for every person on the planet. But is every basic need a right -- a moral and/or legal entitlement to be provided by a government?
Food, shelter and transportation are the most basic of needs, and the problems of hunger, homelessness and limited mobility have long been reported and debated in our country.
The federal government could declare food, shelter and transportation as rights and then aim to provide them for every man, woman and child in America. But then, citizens would have to eat whatever the government feeds them, live wherever the government places them and travel whenever the government directs them.
Farfetched and extreme? Education has been declared a right, and local and state governments provide it (with varying degrees of success) by requiring students in specific areas to attend specific schools, unless their parents have the means to send them to the schools they choose. (I shudder at the thought of the government declaring sex a right.)
The problem with declaring health care a right -- aside from the cost, the enforcement mechanism, the quality of service, etc. -- is that it erodes the fundamental rights noted in our founding documents, i.e. freedom, self determination and limited governmental intrusion.
A young, single worker in excellent health may want to forgo the cost of health care for the first few years in the workplace, but he or she would not be allowed to under the Clinton plan. An employer might want to offer health care as an incentive but couldn't under the Clinton plan.
The goal of a democratic society is not to provide every basic need for its citizens. The goal of a democratic society is to provide basic freedoms to allow its citizens to meet their needs for themselves.
-- Carleton Bryant, assistant managing editor, The Washington Times
Comments (5)
Saying healthcare is a right is like saying carbon dioxide is the single element in controlling climate change. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are self determinant issues and too complex to be summed up in a single right called healthcare. Clinton is using healthcare as a path to power. Healthcare in conjunction with Social Security, Homeland Defense and Income Taxes is enough fiscal power in the governments hands to control every aspect of an citizens pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Perhaps the YouTube commercial wasn't that far off.
Posted by Larry Stone | September 19, 2007 3:19 AM
You certainly make a strong argument. i do wonder, though, how to asure health care for people who must use the emergency rooms in lieu of medical appropriate assistance or who die for lack of access, like the boy in DC who died from a tooth infection because he was refused care without medical coverage. What do you propose?
Posted by Byahna | September 19, 2007 11:50 AM
This blog is very well written; however, from my perspective, the position taken is fundamentally flawed; i.e., it assumes that all Americans regardless of race are born into an egalitarian society and subsequently live the entirety of their lives interacting on a level playing field. This has never been and never will be the case in these United States. Actually the position on health care reflects the same contradictory flaw that the GOP's position on "the right to life" mantra, because they are acutely aware of the advantage of being born Caucasian into a society of unlevel playing fields which contribute to far greater infant mortality rates for non-Caucasians. Do not pregnancy and birth fall under the health care umbrella? How can the GOP mandate the right of the unborn to be born while simultaneously denying that American citizens have no rights for food, clothing, and transportation? The first level of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs lists food, clothing, and shelter--not transportation. Are not the health care and quality outside the womb equally as important as they are inside the womb? The absence of health care insurance not only presents a health crisis for the millions of uninsured Americans, but would you not agree that this absence also places the insured Americans at risk, since many of the uninsured work for and interact in other social settings with the Americans fortunate enough to have health care insurance?
Posted by Bob Daniels | September 19, 2007 3:37 PM
The point here in not egalitarian healthcare as much as why should we let a government that has proven itself completely inept at fiscal responsibility have so much control over our health and therefore our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. They can't even manage fiscal responsibility during the campaigns much less the government. Just what we need, one more case of surprise, I didn't know management.
Posted by Larry Stone | September 21, 2007 2:44 PM
For most people in the US and developed world there is universal health care in the forms of education regarding a healthy diet, exercise and personal hygiene.
Catastrophic health care involving accidents is another issue often covered by mandatory insurance laws for business employers and automobile drivers. Many health risks are minimized by goverment FDA regulation on food safety, EPA regulation on environmental contamination and CDC policies on mandated childhood immunizations. Already, far reaching forms of national health care are in place. Although, these forms of health care exist risks to individual health remain. The battle against disease, sickness and aging is ongoing. Perhaps forever. Among the poor and the not-so-poor the preventative health care measures are inconsistantly followed or simply ignored. Can any health care system compensate for this form of individual irresponsibility ? Can a health care system halt the effects of natural aging ? Life carries a certain amount of risk that can only be categorized as fate or luck of the draw. Everyone dies. Let's put the idea of national health care in proper prespective and balance it against the trade off of government bureaucracy. This latter risk of government bureaucracy poses another man made risk that may in turn be hazardous to national health.
Posted by robert yee | October 16, 2007 10:06 AM