Food, shelter, and clothing are more important than health care in that one can get along for substantial periods of time without health care services but one cannot survive for long without food, shelter, and clothing. Given this plain fact, why don’t the proponents of ‘free’ universal health care demand ‘free’ food, shelter, and clothing? In other words, if a citizen, just in virtue of being a citizen, has a right to health care, why doesn’t the same citizen have the right to what is more fundamental, namely, food, shelter, and clothing?
Why isn't health care a commodity in the way that automotive care is? If I want my car to run well, I must service it periodically. I can either do this myself or hire someone to do it for me. But surely I have no right to the free services of an auto mechanic. Of course, once I contract with a mechanic to do a specified job for a specified sum of money, then I have a right to his services and to his services being performed correctly. But that right is contingent upon our contract. You could call it a contractually acquired right. But I have no right to free automotivce services just in virtue of the fact that I own a car. So why is it any different with my body? Do I have a right to a colonoscopy just in virtue of my possession of a gastrointestinal tract?
My view is that health care is a commodity. You either provide it for yourself or you hire someone to provide it for you. In the latter case, you must pay for it. It is no different in principle from housing. Just as there is a 'housing market' there is a 'health care market.' If there were a right to health care, then there would also be a right to housing. But there is no right to housing. Apply modus tollens.
Rights and duties are correlative. My right to X generates in others the duty to either provide me with X or not interfere with my possession or exercise of X. Thus my right to life induces in others the duty or obligation to refrain from injuring or killing me. So if I have a right to health care, then others have the duty to provide me with it. But who are those others? The government? The government has no money of its own; its revenue comes from taxing the productive members of society. But why are these productive citizens under any obligation to provide 'free' services to anyone?
If we meet in the desert and you are out of water and food, I will give you some of mine, ceteris paribus. But I am under no moral obligation to help you; you have no right to my supplies. Similarly, you have no right to insurance or medicine or a pap smear or a sigmoidoscopy, and I have no obligation to contribute via taxation so that you may get these things.
A government big enough and powerful enough to provide one with ‘free’ health care will be in an excellent position to demand ‘appropriate’ behavior from its citizens – and to enforce its demand. Suppose you enjoy risky sports such as motorcycling, hang gliding, mountain climbing and the like. Or perhaps you just like to drink or smoke or eat red meat. A government that pays for the treatment of your injuries and ailments can easily decide, on economic grounds alone, to forbid such activites under the bogus justification, ‘for your own good.’
The situation is analogous to living with one’s parents. It is entirely appropriate for parents to say to a child: ‘As long as you live under our roof, eat at our table, and we pay the bills, then you must abide by our rules. When you are on your own, you may do as you please.’ The difference, of course, is that it is relatively easy to move out on one’s own, but difficult to forsake one’s homeland.
Then there are the practical considerations. Nationalized health care in the UK and Canada doesn't seem to work very well. See here. Apparently some Brits pull their own teeth with such advanced dental appliances as pliers and vodka. That was the way dentistry was done in the days of Doc Holliday who was, as you know, a dentist besides being a damned good shot.
I think that such whacko rights-talk on the Left is the result of them jettisoning the transcendent, and with it any possibly coherent or robust notion of a right (witness the equally nonsensical "right to choose", which is of course a double-talk euphemism for "right to kill your offspring any time up to delivery"). For members of the Left, "right" nowadays just means "something I think I deserve and really want the government to give me".
But how would you deliver this basic level of healthcare in a non-statist manner?
And more fundamentally, if there is a right to any sort of 'free' healthcare, why are there not rights to basic food, basic clothing, basic housing, basic transpo, etc.
There are market solutions to many of these problems.
Should we not have publicly funded EMTs and ambulances help people in need, even if they don't have insurance? They provide public health care. It's a limited form of universal health care.
Assuming you do like ambulances and the like, that suggests there are some cases where you think publicly-funded health care is a good thing. The question for any sane (i.e., nonlibertarian, nonanarchist) person is where the line should be drawn. What health care services should be universal, and which should be treated as commodities. I'd be interested in reading your thoughts on this.
I agree that rights-talk is a bit tendentious, and is more a useful linguo-political weapon than anything.
Incidentally, it would indeed be strange to believe in health care rights but not the other more basic physical needs, but I'm unaware of anyone who holds such a position. That's what welfare is for. I guess you could be pro universal health care but against welfare, but we are talking about liberals, and we liberals are already pro-welfare.
Eric Thomson
Well put. No argument from me. Also, it is perceptive of you to identify the camel nose under the tent when it comes to nationalized health care:
Those demands are already being made and enforced in Europe and Canada. Indeed, we already see the arguments for controlling behavior to contain health care costs being made here in the U.S.
Regards, Bill T
There are many, many different issues here. No time now, but let me make one observation.
Suppose a non-tax-paying person without health insurance has the misfortune of being shot. He is brought to General Hospital where he receives treatment at taxpayer expense. Do I object to that? No. But that is not to say that the man has a moral right to the treatment. He may have a legal right, but a LR is not a MR.