Obama - Health Care a Right
In tonight's debate, Senator Barack Obama declared that he believed that health care was a right. This statement clearly defines the absolute failure of Senator Obama to comprehend the nature of rights and the Constitution of the United States.
Let us look from the micro to the macro.
If health care is a right, what kind of health care do I have a right to?
Can I compel my dentist to provide me with gold crowns?
Can I compel my plastic surgeon to make me good looking?
Can I compel my dermatologist to provide me with botox?
Can I compel someone to provide me with a transplant I need or want?
If health care is a right, who must provide me with health care?
If health care is a right, how do I compel any provider to provide me with care?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, than health care cannot be a right.
No right under the constitution requires any other citizen to provide me with anything. I can allow all other citizens with all of their constitutional rights without doing anything myself. With that distinction, it can be seen that health care does not fit this pattern. For health care to be a right someone must provide it to those granted that right.
Type rest of the post here
6 comments:
retarded much?
The government provides every child in the nation a public K-12 education, paid for by our taxes. Where in the constitution is it mandated that teachers, principles, groundskeepers, and other citizen workers MUST provide their services as a right guaranteed to other citizens? Based on your foolish logic, we should get rid of the public school system. It's this kind of reactionary, ignorant, low-minded, uneducated thinking which will keep millions of Americans ill for generations to come.
Also, next time you should research your examples better; good luck compelling your personal insurance company to fund your Botox or calf-implants. You truly have no idea what you are talking about, do you?
If we as a people - agree - that our government will provide every human being with access to health care - then it is, by definition - a "right" just as we have decided that a public education is a right and just like every other industrialized country in the world has also done so.
The specifics of what kind of care... is handled just like other issues where the government delivers services.
It's not really relevant.
And the other thing the anti-health-care folks won't deal honestly with is this:
Providing access to basic health care to everyone does not prevent you from pay for more/better coverage if you think you want it.
But apparently.. you'd deny access to others - to basic health care - on the premise that it has to be a "right" and you don't agree that it should be - and if enough folks think like you - then it will never be.
Don't look now - but your view is becoming a minority view.
for Anonymous who commented: retarded much?
No actually, I don't think Barack Obama is retarded. I believe he is an intelligent, slick, dedicated socialist. But I will not insult his intelligence.
Anonymous (2) argues that if a free public education is a right then health care is a right. One difficulty with this argument is the premise that if "government" provides IT than IT is a right. First we need to distinguish between levels of government. The federal government, prior to the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) neither provided primary education nor mandated it. Some states did include this mandate in their constitutions, others did not.
Under IDEA, the congress did mandate that states provide a free public education to all children who were enrolled regardless of the cost of providing it, primarily to protect children with disabilities. Still this does not make primary education a right, but it does make it a mandate to the states.
You make the argument by analogy that if education is a right even though people are not required by the federal constitution to be teachers, than health care is a right even though the constitution does not require doctors to provide health care. Your argument fails because education is not a right, but a mandate, just like the 21 year old drinking age is a mandate.
A perspective missing from your argument, is that the rights of the people existed before the adoption of the constitution. By adopting the constitution the people granted the government some limited powers, but did not give up any rights.
How did the "right to health care" exist before the constitution? If health care was a right prior to the constitution then people could go to the doctor and the doctor would be in some way obligated to treat them regardless of payment. It would follow that all others would be obligated to meet peoples needs. If one needed food, go to the baker and the butcher and demand ones share. Need a house, demand one be provided. In the absence of government coercion or a big stick, none of these "rights" could be enforced because they do not exist.
Rights, as understood by the founders, can be exercised without diminishing those of anyone else. The right to speak, exercise religious faith, petition government, assemble with others, bear arms, be secure in ones possessions against unreasonable search and seizure, and have due process all can be exercised with the diminishment of the rights of any one else.
The requirement that any other person provide material goods, or exercise labor on your behalf except as part of a willing mutual exchange is the exact definition of slavery.
Larry G argues that if government agrees to provide a service then that service is a right. Our constitution and our government convey absolutely no rights to the people. Instead the people retain all their rights and grant to the government limited specified powers.
A government that can create rights can destroy them. In that case they cannot be the "inalienable rights" that are described in the Declaration of Independence. The source of those rights is nature, that people are endowed with their rights by their creator.
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