HCR is not just about rationing and wealth redistribution. It's about the end of all individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist basic human right to health care spreads throughout the legal and political system like a virus.
Posted on 09/24/2009 4:20:40 PM PDT by Joachim
To Americans Who Say Healthcare is a Right
As a citizen of the United States of America, you have a constitution that is set up to protect or preserve for you certain "rights". These include the right to live (life), to live free (liberty), to pursue happiness as you see fit, including amassing and managing or disposing of property, to speak and publish, to decide what you believe about religion and whether and how you will worship, to meet, gather, and associate as you will, to choose your friends and business partners, to defend your life and freedom and property, and to be free of unwarranted search or data collection and the like. In the history of the world as a whole, such freedom is a truly rare and radical proposition.
These rights have something in common—look at their objects: life, liberty, happiness and property; speech, conscience, association and friendships; self-protection and privacy. These are all rights to act, or rights to be free from unwarranted actions of others, or both. They are the rights of a free human being.
Where do you get these rights? Who gives them to you?
I submit that it is either God (the Declaration credits the "Creator") or nobody—take your pick—because these rights are inherently or "unalienably" yours as a free human being. This also is a truly rare and radical proposition—one on which the Declaration rests, and on which our society is grounded—and one that has the ring of truth to it. No woman, no man, no institution of the world can legitimately give these rights to you, or legitimately take them away, because you are born free. No action of other people is required for you to have them. If other people simply leave you reasonably alone, and don't take them away, these rights are yours. (Use them well. Keep them safe.)
How do these rights compare to your claimed "right to healthcare"? (I say "your" claimed right because I, for one, claim no such right. I believe in no such right.)
Well, first of all, what do you mean by a right to healthcare—what are you talking about, anyway? Do you know? Have you thought it over carefully?
Are you talking about a right to freedom of healthcare? Freedom to choose your doctor, your treatment? Freedom to provide for the unexpected (or not) as you see fit? Freedom to compare medical options, to compare medical prices, to compare medical outcomes data on particular doctors and hospitals? Freedom to pursue alternative medicine or to treat yourself, if you so desire? Clearly not. Instead, you are talking (in Congress, at least) about setting uniform standards for healthcare plans and about levying a tax or fine on every business and every individual who does not conform. Whatever that's about, it's not about freedom.
"Healthcare" as you are talking about it seems to mean some "appropriate" or standard level of (1) services of medical personnel, (2) consumption of medical products, and (3) use of medical devices. If you have this magical "appropriate" level, you have "healthcare." This is what you seem to mean by a "right to healthcare"—a right to a certain level of medical products and services.
But this "right" is of very different character from those rights our founding documents seek to preserve and protect. Where do you get this new type of right? Who gives it to you? Who are YOU, historically and philosophically, to be able to claim a "right" to the labor and property of others? Who has dared claim such a right, or who would be recognized today as having such a right?
I see only two possibilities:
On one hand, you are a King, a slaveholder, a dictator, or some other absolute overlord. Such people have, or have had, historically in all parts of the world and presently in many, a "right" to the labor and property of others. But if you have the King's right to healthcare, who will be your slave or subject? What if no one (in your otherwise free society, if you have one) is willing? Will you command someone to go to medical school? Will you force your doctors to work for less, or for free? Will you import third-world medical personnel to be your servants, if your existing subjects resist? (How's that working out, Great Britain?)
On the other hand, you are a child. In modern western culture at least, a child has a claim upon the labor and property of the parent, generally including some "appropriate" level of healthcare. The child's right, however, is limited in power (children do not have that much control over their parents) and in time (children become adults). If you have the child's right to healthcare, who is your "parent"? When did your parent conceive you or otherwise become responsible for you? How much power does your "parent" have over you? And when, if ever, will you grow up?
As I observe the push for national healthcare, it appears to me that you who claim a "right" to healthcare seek the worst of both. You seek the King's or the slaveholder's right, the right of strong control and unlimited duration. But (with some exceptions) you do not want the stress of placating your healthcare subjects, or of owning your healthcare slaves directly. So you will take the labor and property of others through an intermediary, your government. You make your government King and yourself a child. Birthright for pottage.
And you wonder why anyone protests.
For future reference, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” is used in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution of the United States.
Healthcare is one of those “happinesses” you are free to pursue.
Liberals have a different understanding of rights. You cant be happy without housing, health care and education, so the constitution says the USG must provide those. Marxism says freedom comes when the state removes you worries of not having basic needs. (who decides which are those needs??? Democrats!)
Heard Randi Rhoads (ex Air America) explain this a few weeks ago on her show.
Nice job!
Nice post! Well thought out.
When she says the USG must provide does she go on to say that they do this by.....taking what one person has and giving it to someone else? You know, I REALLY need a degree from Harvard to make my life happy and fulfill my life purpose...I want Obama and other greedy people to share their diplomas with me....if they lay claim on minds of others, why don’t I have a claim on theirs, right? Let us all just say that we “virtually” are Harvard grads from now on...we are equal, distributive, fair, the same.
Nice work. Submit it to CanadaFreePress.com (copy@canadafreepress.com). They’ll be happy to publish this.
OK, but can't we pick a school with a decent football program?
I agree. Nobody has a “right” to anything that somebody else has to pay for or provide.
Well done. If only the minions under public education could read and comprehend! The debate is fundamental. Meanwhile our beloved Congress is interested in debating the finer points of how much they want to play the king and we the child.
Well, life and liberty are not free and have to be provided by security, hence police and the military. Yet they are considered rights in the Declaration of independence. Conssidering that Obama and his goons are going to mandate(force by punitive measure) me to obtain insurance simply because I exist, that could be described as unconsititutional.
If there is no one willing to spend 16-20 years of long hard study to develop the skills to provide that health care, there is no care in health care.
Most folks get the basic 12 yrs, you can either skate through and get an Acorn job or you can knuckle down and work really hard to get into college...Once in you can take the bunny route and become a NEA teacher or really knuckle down so you can get into medical school.
Applying yourself to the degree that is required to be accepted into and then completing the requirements for Medicine is entirely self directed. Knowledge cannot be awarded like degrees are.. It is work .
Now to someone that has worked that hard to acquire that knowledge just to become a slave is ludicrous.
What will happen is the best and the brightest will apply themselves to a different field.
What will happen is medical/nursing schools with lower their standards and loosen up their requirements in school, the end result will be a tremendous increase in the incompetence of doctors and nurses.
In the end you will be worse off than you were before..but not only will you be worse off but the entire country and the world will be much worse off.
well said and i will use your arguments as my own...
thanks
t
i will give you credit... thanks
t
Nicely done.
No one has a “right” to the labor of others. That is slavery, by it’s very definition.
bttt
Great stuff. There is no way around the fact that the so-called right to health care is slavery (as are most “entitlements”).
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Health Care Reform (HCR) is a direct assault on individual liberties. I think that is its main purpose.
That means that health care providers have no individual rights. The collective right of the people to receive health care would supersede the provider's individual right to set their fees, their hours or change their occupational status or even decide how to apply their skills and knowledge. A collective right, by practical definition, is a state right because it is a right that is provided by the government to all not protected by the government as something possessed by each person. It is also a state right because it supersedes the individual rights of others when the two come into conflict.
It isn't stated in any of the bills that a patient's rights to care supersedes a provider's right to set fees and hours etc, but it doesn't need to. Rights are always adjudicated in the courts. The legislation simply establishes the foundation for the courts to rule in favor of the patient's collective right to health care.
Weiner’s view is collectivist, fascist and totalitarian. Collectivist because it is superior to an individual right. Fascist because it is overseen by one entity the Federal government. Totalitarian because the Federal government is the true possessor of this collective right and the administrator and enforcer of it as well.
Congressman Weiner's view is the underlying philosophy of the entire Health Care Reform legislation the House and Senate have put forth. Consider the setting up of community watch dogs to monitor various health parameters of citizens in the Senate version of the bill. Look at pages 382 - 393.
TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS
Even the citizens themselves will be subject to state set regulations on their behavior in order to fulfill the human right of universal health care. It isn't the individual's liberty that is being protected by that it is the state's control over its health care system that is being guarded. How much clearer can it be that these bills abrogate the concept of individual rights?
Health Care is a Liberty Issue Conservative Underground - 18 August 2009 - Tim Dunkin
Second Bill of Rights aka FDR's economic bill of rights (An early attempt to embed collective rights into American politics and society.)
Another Stupid Argument: Heath Care is a Right
Obama's Authoritarian, Unconstitutional Health Care Proposal
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