Health Care is NOT a Right

While this subject has been discussed on this site previously, in light of the looming Senate vote and my recent announcement to only accept my district’s median household income for my congressional salary, and to make a charitable donation to local non-profit hospitals, I’d like to review this subject once more.  For more details, please read my health care plank, and to completely debunk the incumbent’s claim that health care legislation is constitutional, please read “To Nancy Pelosi on Health Care – Are YOU Serious?“

In the Bill of Rights of the Soviet Union, they were honest about health care – it states that “citizens of the USSR have the right to health protection.” This document also stipulated Soviet citizens have the “right to work” not longer than 41 hours in a workweek, the “right to rest and leisure,” the “right to education,” the “right to enjoy cultural benefits.” (Source) To find out how well this worked out for the Soviets, try reading Dr. Yuri Maltsev’s article “What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us.”  Even today, Russia’s life expectancy for males is just 59 years, while in the US it is 73 years.

Besides lowering life expectancies under their totalitarian regime, the Soviet Union had it all wrong of course. Health care is not a right. You have a right to breath because air is abundant on our planet – there is no scarcity of it.  Although your life is extremely scarce – there is only one of you – you do have a right to your life – to suggest otherwise is slavery.

You have a right to your property – to suggest otherwise is theft.

You have a right to freedom of expression and to believe what you wish – to suggest otherwise is tyranny.

However, people must pay for things like health care or food. Does a starving man have a right to enter a supermarket and eat whatever he wants?  Health care providers have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to health care, then you must have the ability to force health care providers to serve you.

Therefore health care is a privilege of society.  Health care is a good and a service that everyone pays for.  Health care providers generally work to provide the most affordable care with the highest quality to the rest of society.  (Most health care insurance companies are excluded from this last sentence.)

All the current health care bill does is use the government as an intermediary to exert force directly on health care providers (and employers) to serve you.  The current bill is a TAX and government interventions in labor “laws” will force the poor and needy out of their jobs as Eric Staib predicts here.

To alleviate the pain of the starving and those without adequate medical care, we must turn not to the federal government but instead to ourselves.

To share food and medical care by your own free will is charity.  The government is not capable of charity because of the truth contained in these three words:  GOVERNMENT HAS NOTHING. Government can only redistribute hand-outs after first taxing and confiscating it from someone else.  Neither the President nor Congress can conjure up something from nothing, although politicians are quite good at making miracles seem possible.  (Cartoon courtesy Chan Lowe)

The more prosperous America is, the more wealth created, the better off the poor will be.  Plus they might even have jobs instead of a 22% unemployment morass that the FED and the government has created by their actions. Voluntary organizations on the local level is by far a better choice, and prosperous individuals are the most charitable.  Don’t rob others, but instead live by your principles.  As mentioned above, once I am elected to Congress, I have promised to take only the district’s median household income and donate the remainder to local non-profit hospitals.

However, the irony is my salary is paid by the taxpayer as well.  Like I said, government has nothing.  Don’t forget.

**  Please also check out Judge Napolitano on The Glenn Beck Show below.  One of his guests, Dr. Salerno taught me a few seminars this past summer at Mises University – an excellent teacher!