Why Health Care is not a Right

Rights are things we have inherently. They are God given, or if you prefer, natural to our humanity. Every child is, or should be, born with a basic set of rights. These rights define us and allow us to live our lives without being impeded by others. They allow us to make our own choices and do what we believe is best. We break the law when we infringe on another's rights. The bill of rights in our constitution states many of these basic, fundamental, natural rights. Note how they are not bestowed by the government and they are not dependent on anyone except the individual.

Freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, and petitioning the government for grievances

The right to keep and bear arms

Freedom from the government moving in to your house

Freedom from incriminating ones self...

The list goes on. All of these are the rights of an individual and only affect the individual. Health care, on the other hand, is not an individual affair. If you were stranded on a desert island, you could worship whatever you wanted, could say whatever you wanted, could carry around as many spears as you could make, but you could not have all the health care you wanted. It isn't natural, it isn't inherent. It involves another person.

Health care is a service, not a right. It is a service like having your clothes cleaned or adding an addition to your house. Drugs are not rights, they are goods. Goods that you buy at a drug store, just as you buy groceries at the grocery store or a snow cone at a snow cone shack. This may be harsh, but it's true. A pharmacy is a business, a doctor's office is a business, just like a furniture store or a hair salon, the product is just a bit more life sustaining.

If you mandate health care as a right, you make health care providers slaves to the government. In a free market, you can charge whatever you want, and it is up to the consumer to decide if they are willing to pay that amount. We've seen what good the Walmart 4 dollar list has done for health care--it's because of free market effects. The consumer will generally gravitate to the lowest price. And you must keep up or fail. If health care is declared a right, doctors have no say in who they treat, how they treat, or what they can charge. The providers, in effect, lose their rights. If the government says that an apendectomy is only worth $200 dollars, doctors are forced to charge that, or are forced to get out of the game, and if we drive out all of the med students into law school, how are we, as a country, going to provide that fundamental human right?

Drug companies are going to get killed by this. Believe it or not, there is a reason why drugs are so expensive, it's called research and development. It takes a company years of hard work, research, clinical trials, etc. etc. to bring one drug to the market. It costs millions of dollars to bring a safe and effective therapy to your pharmacy. The companies have to recoup that sunk cost in order to put it toward a new drug. If doctors are forced into formularies and cannot use new therapies, there is no reason for drug companies to come up with them. Who cares that Lovenox is easier to dose and administer, heparin is cheaper, and we have to save the tax payers' money! What does he need Plavix for? Just give him some rat poison and call it good. It's stupid. Pharmacologic decisions should not be made by a governing body.

I believe in charity, I'm grateful for charitable hospitals and clinics that contract with medicaid and drug companies to give care to those who can't afford it, but I would much rather pay to see my chosen doctor at the brand new beautiful Saltzer Medical Group office than to get treated at the Terry Reilly free clinic ::shudder::. Universal health care will level the playing field, but that leveling will knock down the quality for the rest of us.