Health Care Reform Versus Freedom
July 27, 2009
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Posted by Michael S. Langston
Of the myriad of reasons why government run health care should be avoided at all costs, freedom should rank much higher in the conversation than it does today.
Thanks to President Obama’s health care press conference snafu on the Gates situation, people have seemingly moved from believing in our President’s ability to produce national health care, to being more skeptical about his plans for health care.
I wish to submit that any focus on Mr. Obama, his administration, the current makeup of Congress, or any other time sensitive facts, misses the basic point that going down this road is fraught with more corruption and less freedoms.
What we know now – the government currently believes it has the right to tell parents whether they can smoke around their children, tell businesses whether they can allow smoking, and ban certain food ingredients they don’t like (see transfats via NY). They push these laws with the consistent refrain that allowing these things to continue can/will raise health care costs for all.
& this is under the current government system which doesn’t yet fund health care for roughly 1/6th of the population.
When we add these millions of individuals to government run health care roles, we are putting ourselves in a delicate position where economic reasons can be used to control any behavior the government deems “bad” for you.
This can include things such as eating the wrong foods, not getting enough exercise, drinking too much soda… anything which can be shown to have a negative impact on the cost of health care for all citizens becomes the purview of the federal government. Therefore the government will become more likely to take decisions away from citizens that we enjoy today.
Some might say this is irrational blathering of a libertarian lunatic (& they might be right), but we’re seeing, even with pending legislation, the federal government discussing how to make decisions that most of the country would say belongs to them and them alone.
Washington, DC, July 24, 2009—White House health care policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel favors allocating fewer health care resources to senior citizens in order to save money, the Competitive Enterprise Institute discovered today. In a medical journal article published earlier this year, Emanuel justified rationing health care services based on the controversial “senior death discount.” …
The parallel to this process is increased corruption.
As the government expands its reach and power into more and more of our daily lives, citizens and corporations will naturally want to have some say in these new policies. This is because the government will be in charge of spending additional trillions and people will always want to have a say in how that money is allocated. Enter stage left – tons more lobbyists and tons more campaign contributions.
Lastly, this “right” to health care presupposes that it is indeed a “right”.
As the saying goes, the right to wave your arms, stops at the edge of the next man’s nose. IE – once any right you decide to take advantage of, reduces the rights of others, it should rationally cease to be termed a “right”.
Therefore, once the state begins down this road, it will inevitably lead to federal rationing of health care for all as the end-of-life discussions going on now show us. In order to ensure some semblance of equality, the government will need to write laws which will control doctor’s actions.
This will include things such as, what procedures they can/must do and under what circumstances. Following the logic, this “right” any individual might have to health care has just forced changes on the “rights” doctors have on choosing how to practice medicine.
Of course once society as a whole decided they like smoke free environments more, so it should become law, they already demonstrated by their votes their lack of caring when their “rights” interfere with others.
Categories: Politics
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Tags: Freedom, Health Care Reform, Neagitve/Positive Rights, Obama Administration, Politics
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