Why the Right to Life Doesn’t Entail Government-provided Healthcare (Part 1)
By Jay Richards
September 14, 2009, 9:55 am
I recently found myself debating the “right” to healthcare with “progressive” radio host Thom Hartmann (I previously broached the subject of a “right” to healthcare here). Hartmann claimed he had a knock-down, drag-out argument for why the federal government should provided healthcare to all. He argued that since we have a right to life, and healthcare is a basic life necessity, healthcare ought to be part of the “commons,” that is, government should provide it, just as government provides a common defense, a legal and penal system, and so forth. This is a favorite argument for religious advocates of government-run healthcare as well, who sometimes even conflate healthcare with giving life.
Conservatives are sometimes cowed by this argument, perhaps because they don’t want to seem heartless. But I think it’s a mistake not to address the argument head on. The argument is singularly unimpressive, and, frankly, it’s a prime example of the pseudo morality that has come to surround the healthcare arguments coming from the left. Over the next few days, I’ll mention some of the faults with this argument. No doubt, there are others that haven’t occurred to me.
First is the background premise itself, namely, that the right to life requires the (federal) government to provide basic life necessities. As I pointed out to Hartmann, this claim proves way too much. If it were correct, why shouldn’t the government also provide water, food, clothing, shelter, employment, transportation (and probably in that order) before it provides healthcare, since these things are far more basic to our daily lives than healthcare is? In other words, why wouldn’t this argument entail socialism outright?
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Why the Right to Life Doesn’t Entail Government-provided Healthcare (Part 2)
By Jay Richards
September 15, 2009, 4:59 pm
Jeff Jacoby has just written a nice piece on this subject in the Boston Globe. He starts by describing an intercessory prayer by Max Allen, Sen. Edward Kennedy’s 12-year-old grandson, which Allen offered at the late Senator’s funeral last month:
For what my grandpa called the cause of his life . . . that every American will have decent quality healthcare as a fundamental right and not a privilege, we pray to the Lord.
No doubt Allen’s opinion is shared by millions of Americans; but that still doesn’t mean that, left unchallenged, it will give rise to a federal healthcare policy that will do more good than harm.
It’s worth the time to read Jacoby’s entire piece, but here’s the most important part:
It is not hard to understand the urgent passion with which so many people approach the issue of healthcare. And it would take a remarkably cold heart to be indifferent to the desperation of those who need medical help but cannot afford it. But rights do not spring from passion or need. Wanting something does not entitle you to it—not if someone else must provide or produce that something. The rights delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are negative rights only—they protect our autonomy, allowing us to peacefully live life and pursue happiness, neither coercing others nor being coerced by them.
My right to free speech or to own property does not give me a claim on anyone else’s time or labor or resources. But if I have a “right’’ to healthcare, someone else must be compelled to provide or pay for that care. Compulsion comes in different forms—higher taxes, insurance mandates, healthcare rationing, intrusive regulations—but the bottom line is the same: a right to healthcare would leave society less free.
I think Jacoby has that exactly correct. I have the right not to be murdered by my neighbor, and not to have my property arbitrarily confiscated by the government. I don’t have the right to make my neighbor pay for my prescription bills, or to get the government to coerce him for the same cause, even though he’s got an orange Ferrari (really). As emotionally and morally appealing as a “right to healthcare” is, the promiscuous use of rights language can lead to public policy that, in the end, dissolves the real rights enshrined in our founding documents.
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Why the Right to Life Doesn’t Entail Government-provided Healthcare (Part 3)
By Jay Richards
September 16, 2009, 12:12 pm
Perhaps one of the reasons so many Americans have grown accustomed to thinking of healthcare as a right is because it’s often described as a life-and-death issue. But even if the right to life required the (federal) government to provide basic life necessities, it wouldn’t follow that it should provide generic healthcare. Why? Because, as important as it is, the vast majority of healthcare we receive isn’t a basic life necessity. I don’t expect Republican legislators to make this argument, of course, but it’s true nonetheless.
Just think about the last several times you’ve gone to the doctor. Was your life in imminent danger? Chances are, it wasn’t. (I’ll talk about real life-and-death situations in the next installment.)
The most common diagnosis for adults who visit the doctor or emergency room is high blood pressure (for teenagers, it’s acne). Remember, that’s when there’s a negative diagnosis, so it doesn’t include all the visits for regular checkups and routine maintenance. Another very common reason adults visit the doctor is … back pain.
I can sympathize. In July, I went to the doctor for a back spasm. On Monday, I visited a physical therapist for the same problem. And in the last two years, I’ve seen a doctor for an eye exam, a tooth exam, migraine headaches, and several other irritating but non-lethal ailments. Without medical help for these problems, I (and those around me) would have had a much poorer quality of life. Nevertheless, my life was never at risk. For most of human history, most people have lived without these services and many more besides. Were they all being denied their most basic human right? Surely not.
I am more or less typical. In modern society, a lot of the healthcare we receive has to do with, well, our health and quality of life. And the more affluent and technologically advanced we become, the more this trend will continue.
Perhaps one of the reasons we so easily associate our healthcare with life and death is because so much of our healthcare is covered by what we call “insurance.” And we normally insure ourselves against the improbable but catastrophic. Insurance normally covers unknown risks with potentially devastating costs. Most of what we pay for with health insurance is quite different.
Think of the other things you insure, such as your life, your car, and your home. I have life insurance in case something improbable but catastrophic occurs that would leave my family in financial straits, namely, my untimely death. I don’t buy “life” insurance that gives me payments in dribs and drabs as I get older and draw nearer to death, or even to prevent my untimely death.
I insure my car, again, in case something improbable but somewhat catastrophic occurs, namely, a car wreck. Here, I’m protecting others (with liability) as well as myself. But I don’t have gasoline, oil, brake pad, and car wash insurance.
With home owner’s insurance, I’m protecting myself from financial ruin in case my house burns down with all my possessions in it. But I don’t have air conditioner, lightbulb, paint, and refrigerator insurance to cover basic upkeep.
Now contrast these ordinary types of insurance with health insurance. A great deal of health insurance is not really insurance at all (in the usual sense of the word). It’s a pre-payment for services, or a “cash-flow management policy.” Most of us are now accustomed to this arrangement. Those customs, along with myriad laws and regulations make it hard to do things differently. But it’s no more obvious that the government should cover or insure these services than it is obvious that government should cover the many other services we receive in our daily lives. It’s a stretch to claim that God has etched the right to these services (which, ultimately, means the right to make someone else provide them) into the moral order of the universe. But that implausible scenario is just what the religious left implies when it speaks of a “right” to health insurance.
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Why the Right to Life Doesn’t Entail Government-provided Healthcare (Part 4)
By Jay Richards
September 17, 2009, 11:44 am
Our lives do not hang in the balance for most of the healthcare that most of us receive most of the time. That fact alone severs the supposed link between the right to life and the “right to healthcare” (which I don’t think follows in any case, but let that pass for now). But of course, sometimes medical attention is a matter of life and death. What about those situations?
Almost everyone recognizes that, in general, emergency situations differ from ordinary healthcare. We recognize the difference legally. That’s why hospitals and ambulances already have to treat medical emergencies. In fact, emergency rooms are legally required to provide a screening exam and treatment even if the patient is uninsured, is not a legal citizen, and isn’t even suffering from a life-threatening problem. (We don’t need federal reform to mandate this, in other words, because it’s already mandated.) The moral intuition behind this policy surely makes sense—even if healthcare per se is not a right.
The Western moral tradition has long recognized that a real-time emergency is a special circumstance. In fact, in an emergency, we permit some actions that we would otherwise forbid. Showing this in detail would require too much Jesuitical reasoning (in the positive rather than pejorative sense) for a short commentary, but most of us get the point intuitively. For instance, we judge the man who temporarily “steals” a car to prevent a child from bleeding to death, or to prevent a terrorist, Jack Bauer-like, from blowing up a baseball stadium, differently than we judge the teenager who steals the car for a joyride.
Of course, it still doesn’t follow that people have a right to emergency treatment free of charge (or more precisely, underwritten by taxpayers). Ordinarily, we are morally obligated to pay for treatment we receive. Requiring people to pay for services rendered after the fact, including emergency services, is just, not unjust.
Even though this emergency response policy is related to a legitimate moral principle, as an unfunded government mandate, it still has some perverse consequences. For instance, it often prevents medical professionals from being fairly compensated. I’m pretty sure that forced labor without due compensation is unjust. And all this emotionally gratifying talk about a “right” to healthcare may help perpetuate the injustice.
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