Health Care is Not a Right
Joshua Riddle, Intern ·
Dec 30, 2010 at 12:25pm
Walter E. Williams, an econ professor at George Mason University, has put together a great video articulating the difference between our ‘rights’ and our mere ‘wishes.’ He concludes that health care is not a right.
If we had a right to health care, then we would also have a right to a proper shelter, three healthy meals a day, a treadmill, and a private weight room. While every citizen can strive to attain these privileges, it is not the obligation of someone else to provide them.
Williams makes the case for why socialized medicine is morally wrong. Meanwhile, the Swedes have recently shown us why socialized medicine is painfully—and debilitating – inefficient.
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May '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
The good ole negative rights vs. positive rights debate. A classic.
May '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Jul '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
WEW - classic. I find it hard to disagree with hardly anything this man says.
Jul '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Where my issue witht the left comes in is this attitude they hold that somehow if a "right" they support is NOT subsidised by the Government it is somehow a "right denied."
The first time I learned how irrational a leftist can be was in a discussion regarding abortion and federal funding of such. I asked him if he would support federal funding for me to obtain a Ruger GP 100, since the right to keep and bear arms was clearly codified in the 2nd amendment, but abortion was somehow derived from the melding of the 4th and 5th amendments (therby converting property rights to privacy rights).
I've never seen someone go genuinly balistic until I made that suggestion.
I must say, however, there was a hidden benefit, he never talked to me again.
May '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
I myself have tried arguing against the proposition that there is such a thing as a moral right to healthcare on more than one occasion but I rarely if ever provoke anything other than contempt.
The federal government should not include the U.S. as a signatory to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights because it recognizes positive rights such as rights to leisure, education, and financial security.
Jun '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Jaydee_007: Where my issue witht the left comes in is this attitude they hold that somehow if a "right" they support is NOT subsidised by the Government it is somehow a "right denied."
The first time I learned how irrational a leftist can be was in a discussion regarding abortion and federal funding of such. I asked him if he would support federal funding for me to obtain a Ruger GP 100, since the right to keep and bear arms was clearly codified in the 2nd amendment... · Dec 30 at 1:06pm
This is a great point, and a key distinction we need to emphasize. I believe health care is a right, in exactly the same sense as the right to keep and bear arms. That is, the government has no obligation to pay for my firearms or my health care, but neither can it prevent me from buying as much of either as I choose. Government control and rationing of health care is the real threat to our health care rights.
May '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
It may come as something of a surprise to learn that I'm currently on the gummint dole and in daily danger of my life. But, Good Lord, struggling mightily to get out of both situations, and nobody owes me anything. Certainly don't think health care is a right, cause then how would the doctors have any incentive to go through school and show up?
Jul '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Excellent point, Jaydee. I'm putting that one in storage for later use.
And Joshua, for posting this.... move to the Head of the Class.
Jul '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
And Jaydee, on abortion "rights," I've had this discussion too. If Rights are Universal, then I would like the "right" to an abortion. I was asked why since I couldn't get pregnant. I replied, "No, but she is as a result of Me and I would like to abort it. I want My 'abortion rights' too."
Nov '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Kennedy, I'm so very sorry.
Dec '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
I do feel the "Healthcare as a Right" debate is at the heart of where we stand as a nation. When only 50% of citizens pay any federal income taxes and senior citizens come to expect to be taken care of after 65 I'm afraid we may be past the tipping point beyond which a return to self-reliance as the norm may be impossible. That is why the Obamacare repeal is so critical. I would suggest to Joshua that using examples of malpractice in socialist systems is an ineffective way to make the critical point that medicine as private enterprise has led to the successful (albeit expensive) system we currently have. Malpractice in our system is also a problem and crazy examples can always be provided so I would focus on other issues. I can see a patient today, have a CT brain scan done in 30 minutes, blood drawn and do an EMG all in my office, to diagnose a neurologic problem, a process that would take 2-3 months for patients in Canada or Britain. And patients expect that kind of service! They don't realize what they have in the US.
Jul '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Lucy Pevensie
Kennedy, I'm so very sorry. · Dec 30 at 6:05pm
Can't be too bad, He's got internet access and can pay Ricochet's fees (I think He's paying for it).
Dec '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
This is an example of plain stupid wrong. What about the most basic expectation of government--civil order. We agree to government because it maintains order. Government stops crime and it provides forums (courts) for resolution of disputes. Those facts impose many obligations (the least being taxes) on others. So Williams is wrong. Our base expectation of government imposes obligations on others. Indeed, the essence of government is the imposition of mutual obligations on the governed.
As technology and circumstances have evolved, we now expect government to guarantee access to basic needs: shelter, food, and medical care. Who cares about the Irish in 1840 (Williams' example). Basic human needs are rights today in the same way that orderly resolution of disputes is a right. Those are rights in the same way that we expect government to maintain order and stop crime.
What can conservatives do? Simple. Protect choice. The issue for conservatives is to protect their "right" to choose how they will receive health care.
May '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Health care may not be a "right" as Dr. Williams defines such. However, under EMTALA, and predecessor case law, everyone has a right of treatment at US emergency rooms. It's bad policy, but it is US law.
And when we look all around the world we see that virtually every developed nation has adopted some form of mandated health insurance or care availability. There has to be a reason for this universal situation- other than purely bad US policy. The international market is telling us something. One thing it is telling us, by the way, is that single payer is a disaster, as evidenced by the changes adopted in the countries (UK, Canada) that started out that way.
Further, health care is indeed different from food and shelter- mostly because the government's pernicious influence in destroying private markets- through such laws, third-party payment, and bad regulation- has rendered classic purchased services unaffordable. Government has a responsibility to help fix what it has broken.
Unfortunately, all of the repairs thus far attempted, with the partial exception of Medicare part D, have shattered the glass still further. Thus we need to do someting- but Obamacare certainly isn't it.
Nov '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
The Democrats responsible for the Obamacare monster do not believe anyone except them has a right to health care. What they really believe is that they have a right to decide for everyone else what and how much health care other people (not them) can get. They believe they have the right to ration health care, to force you to buy health insurance of a certain kind, to deny you the ability to buy health insurance they don’t approve of, and in the end to decide whether you can have any health care at all.
A "right to health care” misses the point. The issue is how to regain the rights we used to have, and have lost. The right to choose a doctor, the right to buy an insurance policy tailored to your own needs, the right to buy insurance from any company that offers the best deal without regard to what state that company happens to be located. The right to be responsible for oneself, to be let alone by a bunch of officious nannies trying to control every nook and cranny of our existence.
Edited on Dec 30, 2010 at 10:45pmMay '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
The fact that you neither possess female genitalia nor the ability to get pregnant does not discredit the principle of an abortion right. Abortion rights sanction the termination of one's pregnancy, not one's child after he/she is born. A fetus is, among other things, an appendage of the mother.
Furthermore, I'd like to make another distinction between abortion and healthcare. The right to abort is not analogous to a right to healthcare. The former, when endorsed by classical liberals, refers to a sanction to terminate one's pregnancy, either to terminate one's own or to assemble with others who are willing to terminate one's pregnancy for the purpose of termination. By contrast, a right to healthcare refers to a right to be provided with healthcare at another's expense. The latter condones the use of force by the state; the former does not.
Edited on Dec 30, 2010 at 11:42pmMay '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Yep, though I do have a modest income from being in the next Ricochet ad campaign. Flat busted broke with a terminal medical condition? Don't die quickly! You want to stick around to see what happens, for only tree-fitty. Ricochet! Join the conversation.
Actually, terminal is such an ugly word, and used loosely. True, I was supposed to die this year, but the latest is that I'm out of immediate danger. So all six fans can look forward to about a decade of shallow, witty, pointless snark.
May '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
I would submit that health care in the US has become so expensive precisely because it came unmoored from free enterprise long ago, when it became an employee benefit as a way to attract workers in the era of wage and price controls during WWII. Cut medical care free of third-party payers (at least for routine care) and restore competition in a free marketplace, and costs should eventually drop as consumers make their own decisions on what they spend for care. Also, stop using the tax code to discriminate against people who don't have coverage through their employer. Of all the reforms the adminsitration could have enacted, they left that one untouched.
And oh yes, I agree with Walter Williams entirely. Health care is not a right. We have a very promiscuous understanding of what rights are these days.
May '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
Kennedy Smith: Yep, though I do have a modest income from being in the next Ricochet ad campaign. Flat busted broke with a terminal medical condition? Don't die quickly! You want to stick around to see what happens, for only tree-fitty. Ricochet! Join the conversation.
Actually, terminal is such an ugly word, and used loosely. True, I was supposed to die this year, but the latest is that I'm out of immediate danger. So all six fans can look forward to about a decade of shallow, witty, pointless snark. · Dec 31 at 4:40am
J_s_s Kennedy, sorry to hear it man. You are in my prayers for the New Year. Hope you stage a recovery and a new job asap. Also I have been out of work for some of this year, it aint pretty watching my finances become EU-Greek-like in their redness.
Aug '10
Re: Health Care is Not a Right
The depressing thing about this video: So many of the examples he cites that he seems to think ANY reasonable person should recognize AREN'T rights are precisely the sort of things that I hear activists and opposition politicians REPEATEDLY claiming are rights.
Example: "Free speech doesn't mean someone else has to buy me a tv studio."
Yeah, try telling that to the governors of the BBC, the executive boards of the CBC and the Corporation for Public Broadcast, and the "artists" who make a living off the National Endowment for the Arts and/or The Canada Council, and/or TeleFilm Canada, etc, etc, etc...