Many socialized medicine advocates consider health care to be a basic human right. They see any system that does not grant health care to all as violating the rights of the uninsured. No doubt their intentions are good; it is painful to watch a loved one suffer. Sometimes the world seems unfair, and the government should step in. While socialized medicine advocates are well intentioned, they are confusing a right with an entitlement. So, what is a right? Broadly defined, human rights involve the prevention of one person imposing his will upon another. If a man were dropped on a deserted island, he would have all of his human rights: he could go where he wanted, say what he wanted, keep anything he built or collected, and employ his time how he chose. This castaway would not have the right to food, but would rather have to gather it himself. He would not have the right to a hut, but if he built one, nobody could take it away. By its nature, health care cannot be a right because it not free or limitless. Health care is the combined work of millions of people who dedicate their careers to researching new treatments, administering care, building hospitals, and running businesses. Most of these people find great satisfaction in their professions, but they also expect to be compensated for their expertise and efforts. They have the right to do what they want and chose the career that best suits them. Socialists like Michael Moore who claim that health care is a ‘right’ must not realize that health care is the result of the voluntary career choices of countless people. The great fallacy of socialism is that greater wealth cannot be willed into existence by the government. The government can only take wealth away from some and give it to others. The only way to make health care a ‘right’ is to somehow force unwilling people to provide it to people they normally would not. As this blog has shown, however, the demand for subsidized health care is limitless, so rationing in the form of long waits and ‘death panels’ becomes inevitable. The government has a long history of providing such ‘rights,’ usually with disastrous results. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are hopelessly bankrupt and will fail within a few decades. Yet socialists continue to claim that health care is a basic human right. They live in a fantasy where resources are limitless and the great socialist experiments of the 20th Century never killed upwards of half a billion people. The only way to deliver false ‘rights’ such as universal health care is to indenture innocent people to work for the collective goal. The next time someone claims a right for himself at your expense, take a moment to explain his error.
Shout Bits
A commentary on the foibles of the US's political and media elite
This is a very interesting blog that you have here. It's important that their are blogs out there who hold a very strong opinion towards certain issues.
I have a site myself where anyone can freely express their opinion towards controversial issues. I'm telling you this because I believe that you can provide others with some valuable insight towards some issues.
Keep up the good work, and maybe we can do a link exchange.
Sincerely,
Jason
That is a very interesting point of view that health care is not a right. Although, this is technically true, I still feel that the government still has an obligation to deal with health care of its citizens. This obligation comes not from an actual written law or technicality, but rather something more along the lines of tradition. As you probably are aware of, the US government stayed out of the business of its ordinary citizens until the Great Depression, when the government actually greatly altered its role in the lives of Americans. Spewing out many reform programs to help jobless citizens, the government now changed its "indifferent" attitude towards helping its citizens to more of an involved parent figure. Programs like the CCC, PWA, WPA, the government really helped American get back on its feet (well, the government and WWII) from the Great Depression. From that time, the government set a precedent to help its citizens and it has done that ever since with its Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security etc. Why should the government stop now? There wasn't ever a mandatory law for the government to help the people, but it did so anyway to better the nation. Anyway, although there is no technicality stating that the government must deal with the health care programs now, does that mean it should break its seventy or so year "tradition" of helping the people survive and prosper?
I believe rather firmly that the choices made by the government during the great depression actually lengthened the depression, although possibly made the depression less deep.
The problem is that all of the make-work programs of the great depression increased demand for labor. This also means it reduced the demand for jobs. There's always a flipside to the supply/demand curve, and, in this case, the lower demand for jobs meant that wages did not continue trending down to the market clearing price.
Now, that was actually the point of those programs, I understand, but the result of this was to increase the cost of living for everyone, including the unemployed, and reduce the opportunity for new job creation in the productive market place.
How it works is pretty simple: the job market tanks due to the halting of consumption as a result of a saturation driven by free credit (sound familiar? It should) and so people get laid off. In a standard deflationary spiral, as people get laid off, they buy less, and that means more people get laid off.
So, having created the situation with too much money, the government stepped in with more money. They paid people to do all kinds of make-work, things nobody in their right mind would have paid for at that point. Some of these things were beneficial, but the ratio of make-work to beneficial work was not particularly favorable to the economy as a whole.
So, imagine an economy with ten people, one of which is wealthy, three of which are unemployed, two of which are on the make-work plan, and four of which produce. As you can see, the things people want and need are being produced by only four people.
Now, the rich guy is resting on his laurels; he's not parasitic because he created value at one time. The three unemployed are living off of savings or somebody else's income. The two CCC workers are getting paid to do grand scheme stuff. All of them are bidding against the four workers who actually produce.
When an economy suffers overproduction such as that, it is very important that production be brought into line with available income. For this to happen properly, banks must fail. People must take pay cuts to get new jobs. Now, for the good part: everything gets cheaper. People will see available income increase due to lower costs everywhere. A short period of time (as little as a year to as long as three years) is all that is required. Like the Phoenix from the ashes, a new economy rises, stronger for the lesson learned.
As for government-funded healthcare, I'm totally against it. I believe in 'freedom in healthcare', letting me buy whatever medicine I want at a freely negotiated price, with or without the advice of whomever I please to designate as my healthcare advisor.