Healthcare: Commodity or Fundamental Right?*
*Disclaimer:Â This post was written by a cold-hearted capitalist who views the world through the objective lens of reality, and it may anger anyone who likes rainbows, polar bears, and myopic utopias.
We have to decide whether healthcare is a commodity or a right. Not everyone can drive a Lexus. Does everyone deserve access to the very latest and most expensive medical technologies?
I think most people would say yes they should have that access. Being able to use expensive diagnostics like MRI’s in the treatment of a uninsured child, for example, is one of the great things about being American.  Unfortunately we have to accept that this decision has consequences.
If healthcare is a commodity that consumers must pay for, we would be better served by healthcare solutions that catered to varying income demographics (Walmart vs. Saks Fifth Avenue, translated to the healthcare industry). This would allow the free market to come up with innovations to keep the costs of healthcare down. Unfortunately this would necessarily mean limiting access to the very best healthcare resources.
However if healthcare is a right, and everyone deserves to “shop at Saks Fifth Avenue”, there doesn’t seem any way around setting up a system for wealth redistribution, because we just don’t have that much money. Right now, all things considered, it seems like we have come up with a decent compromise between cost and quality. Our current healthcare system isn’t perfect, but it is working reasonably well, and better than any other in the world. In spite of this, our government seems to believe that healthcare must be a fundamental right.
Based upon this we must understand that wealth redistribution will follow. All I ask for from the government is honest debate. Favoring wealth redistribution and healthcare for all is a point of view that, as Americans, anyone has a right to. What bothers me is we are told “Great news! Healthcare will not add one single penny to the deficit….pay no attention to the socialist behind the curtain”. Americans have more intelligence than that, and most of us don’t suffer liars.
Healthcare is not a right. A right stands by itself, causing no action on the part of another and it cannot infringe on the rights of another. If healthcare were a right it would require the actions of a healthcare worker to supply it. The healthcare worker cannot be forced to provide labor without just compensation and without his permission. To require such would be slavery. To use taxpayer monies to supply just compensation to the healthcare worker does not solve the problem. My money is just a physical representation of my labor. I worked for it and have a right to possess it. It is part of my right to my own labor and my right to own property. When it is taken, through taxes, without my permission, my rights have been violated. If healthcare were a right how could it exist without violating other of our rights? It can't; therfore it is not a right.
Tom Usher
13 Oct 09 at 1:53 pm
How do feel that healthcare is not a fundamental right? Is it because your one of the more fortunate people who seem to not care because you have it regardless. When the Dcelaration of Independence gave Americans the right life it didnt include healthcare.How can we be guaranteed the right to life without the right to healthcare.
Jasmin
30 Jan 10 at 9:14 am