Jacob Sullum has a must-read piece on the folly of the Democrats' argument that government subsidized health care is somehow a fundamental human right. Sullum says this oft-repeated statement "reveals a radical assault on the traditional American understanding of rights." (See Sullum's article below)
Along those same lines, in remarks announcing the health care deal on Saturday Chris Dodd cited FDR's famous Four Freedoms speech to produce the mind-bending argument that a massive government takeover of the health care system actually represents an expansion of liberty in that it frees us from "one of the great fears Americans have lived with for generations."
"So today we stand ready to pass a bill into law that finally makes access to quality health care a right for every American, not a privilege for a fortunate few in our country.
This month sixty-nine years ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlined four freedoms: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.
And one of the great fears that Americans have lived with for generations is the fear that their child, their spouse, a loved one, they themselves will be hit with an illness for which they cannot receive treatment because they can't afford it, they can't see a doctor because they can't afford it.
This bill does not guarantee you'll never get sick. It doesn't guarantee you're not going to die. All we're trying to do is to guarantee that if you are a fellow citizen of ours and you are struck with illness, or a loved one is, that you'll never again have that fear that you'll end up losing your home, your job, your retirement, your life savings, because you've been afflicted by an illness through no fault of your own that we are dealing with the freedom - that rational freedom that all Americans have that one day they will suffer the dignity- or indignity - of not being able to afford the care for their family and loved ones."
Dodd goes on to say that as "a nation founded on freedom and sustained by unimaginable prosperity, this bill is long overdue and critically important."
Where to start? Set aside the fact that Dodd shamelessly hijacks FDR's "freedom from fear" from its original context - the anxiety felt in January 1941 by the global war being waged by the totalitarian Axis powers - and grafts it onto a domestic policy issue concerning a relatively small percentage of the U.S. population.
Set aside also Dodd's use of the phrase "through no fault of your own," designed to evoke sympathy and cast individuals as victims. (If I develop lung cancer after 20 years of smoking, is my illnesses "no fault of my own" and therefore the costs of my treatment should be subsidized by my fellow taxpayers?)
It's troubling to watch Dodd celebrate a massive nanny-state solution to health care by suggesting it somehow expands the American public's freedoms and liberties when in fact many of the provisions of the legislation do just the opposite. What about freeing people from the fear that medical care will have to be rationed under this plan? Or freeing them from the fear that they may not be able to visit the doctor of their choice? Or freeing them from the fear the government will levy a fine against them and possibly throw them in jail if they do not go out and buy health insurance they may neither want nor need?
In so many demonstrable ways, this bill represents an assault on the freedoms of scores of millions of Americans.
Furthermore, Dodd's argument allows for the federal government to do virtually anything under the guise of "freeing the American people" from this fear or that. And despite Dodd's reference to country's founding as a point of support for universal health care (as a nation founded on freedom), the Founders envisioned a federal government of distinctly limited powers - which the First Congress underlined by ratifying the 10th Amendment.
Imagine what the Founders would think if they saw the size and breadth of the federal government today - and what they would think about expanding the scope of its power to include the health care system. I doubt they would call it a victory for freedom.
There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lumpectomy
The folly of a "right to health care" Jacob Sullum | December 23, 2009
This week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that his chamber’s health care bill “demands for the first time in American history that good health will not depend on great wealth.” Reid said the legislation “acknowledges, finally, that health care is a fundamental right—a human right—and not just a privilege for the most fortunate.”
Since more than four-fifths of Americans already have medical insurance, and even those without “great wealth” have been known to enjoy “good health,” Reid was laying it on a little thick. But his premise, which is shared by President Obama, explains the moral urgency felt by supporters of the health care overhaul that is making its way through Congress. It also reveals a radical assault on the traditional American understanding of rights.
The Framers believed the Constitution recognized pre-existing rights, protecting them from violation by the government. The common law likewise developed as a way of protecting people from wrongful interference by their neighbors. If people have rights simply by virtue of being human, those rights can be violated (by theft or murder, for example) even in the absence of government.
By contrast, notwithstanding Reid’s claim that government-subsidized health care is a fundamental human right, it does not make much sense to say that it exists in a country too poor to afford such subsidies or at a time before modern medicine, let alone in the state of nature. Did Paleolithic hunter-gatherers have a right to the “affordable, comprehensive and high-quality medical care” that the Congressional Progressive Caucus says is a right of “every person”? If so, who was violating that right?
During his second presidential debate with Republican nominee John McCain, Obama said health care “should be a right for every American.” Why? “There's something fundamentally wrong,” he said, “in a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills.”
According to the president, people have a right to health care because it is wrong to charge them for medical services they can’t afford. Which is another way of saying they have a right to health care.
While liberty rights such as freedom of speech or freedom of contract require others to refrain from acting in certain ways, “welfare rights” such as the purported entitlement to health care (or to food, clothing, or shelter) require others to perform certain actions. They represent a legally enforceable claim on other people’s resources. Taxpayers must cover the cost of subsidies; insurers and medical professionals must provide their services on terms dictated by the government.
A right to health care thus requires the government to infringe on people’s liberty rights by commandeering their talents, labor, and earnings. And since new subsidies will only exacerbate the disconnect between payment and consumption that drives health care inflation, such interference is bound to increase as the government struggles to control ever-escalating spending. Rising costs will also encourage the government to repeatedly redefine the right to health care, deciding exactly which treatments it includes.
If health care is a fundamental right, equality under the law would seem to require that everyone have the same level of care, regardless of their resources. That principle was illustrated by the case of Debbie Hirst, a British woman with metastasized breast cancer who in 2007 was denied access to a commonly used drug on the grounds that it was too expensive.
When Hirst decided to raise money to pay for the drug on her own, she was told that doing so would make her ineligible for further treatment by the National Health Service. According to The New York Times, “Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.” The right to health care is so important, it seems, that it can nullify itself.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist.
© Copyright 2009 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
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