Right to Health Care: When Freedom is Slavery by Another Name

Health Care a Right?
"Health care should be a right", says Representative John Dingle. I've heard this same impassioned comment from dozens of others. The language of rights is powerful in American history, so the assertion has a compelling feel to it. Isn't the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" our most sacred principle of freedom? Without good medicine your life and happiness are in great jeopardy. So obviously,the logic goes, health care should be guaranteed to all freedom loving citizens. In fact, we should also be free from want and...and from fear itself! But not so fast...

Let me show you the sleight of hand. It's quite simple. The triumvirate of rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) refers to what in Natural Law is known as inalienable rights. These are rights that, in the rawest state of nature (say if you were alone on a tropical island) you would be guaranteed to have. These are God-given innate qualities of the human condition. They exist without a social contract. We are designed to assert these rights even as Nature challenges them with hunger, disease, and the elements.

Then comes society. With society comes the ability to exchange rights with others. These are "vested" rights. Vested rights occur as the result of exercising inalienable rights. You can use your free will to voluntarily trade your right to property for a right to someone else's property. The key word is voluntary. Successful societies have learned how to create law which promotes the inalienable rights of everyone. Because everyone has different talents, true protections of inalienable rights will always lead to unequal outcomes.

The concept of a right to health care descends directly from the notion of "freedom from want". Franklin Roosevelt first articulated this progressive ideal in his "Four Freedom's Speech". This "freedom" refers to the guarantee of receiving goods and services. In the rawest state of nature, goods and services don't exist. They are created through the application of labor. Nature bestows no absolute right to the fruit of of someone else's labor except through brute force. It is one thing for you to say "I have a right to pick that apple" and quite another to say "I have the right to force you to pick that apple for me". Having the "freedom" to take the produce of another used to be called plunder and slavery.

Photo of Benkos Bioho by who is that with rachel

The guy who says that health care should be a right is saying "I have a right to force people to serve me". 16% of U.S. GDP is devoted to creating the good s and services of medical care. It represents millions of people working hard each day. Should we have a right to their labor (or the labor of the tax payers funding them) for little or no cost? The real kicker is this: that mentality is equivalent to the thinking of southern slave owners two hundred years ago. The slave had no rights to the fruit of his own labor. They belonged to somebody else. He was compelled to provide goods and services to somebody else at no cost. In addition, the slave could not live his life freely. His owners told him how to live his life (being healthy was definitely a requirement). Current health care proposals in Washington contain both these aspects of slavery.

Elements of coercion, to some extent are necessary evils of any society. We have had a military draft. We have had eminent domain seizures. We have had quarantines. But aren't these the exceptions to the rule? The principles of freedom require that we always try to minimize such coercion.

A note about taxes. Taxation is an example of a necessary evil. You can never get unanimous consent from all citizens about whether to be taxed and by how much and for what purpose. Since this subject deserved a full exploration, I wrote about it at length here: Freedom Based Taxation. In short, we can balance the freedom of collective action with that of individual action. The evils of taxation can be minimized by observing the locality principle and by ensuring that the benefits are shared equally by all.

Partial Slavery
I probably won't have many people argue with my view that outright human bondage is a bad idea. I think most would agree that we'd rather suffer a reduced quality of life than live directly on slave labor. Examine the condition of a slave. Would it make it better if we gave the slave Saturday off? On Saturday he can keep all his earnings and do as he pleases. Does that make it better? Okay, let's give him 3 days off. Now he's 42% free. Probably not good enough, so how about he only has to work for his master one day of the week and we'll let him pick which day. Now he's a fractional slave only 14% of the time. Lastly, let's let the slave be free to leave the plantation entirely but he must remit 14% off his earnings back to his master. Are we good now? I think it is obvious that nothing short of 100% free will do, don't you agree? But today, some taxpayers are fractional slaves to others. 4 in 10 tax filers pay no federal income tax at all and the top 50% pay 97% of the taxes. Clearly, an unduly large class of Americans receive benefits paid for by others without their consent.

"Freedom from want" entails large scale widespread coercion. No people in history has ever enjoyed freedom from want. It is part of Nature's Law. "Want" is what drives people to action. The current drive to nationalize health care is just one more attempt so solve social problems at the expense of individual freedom. It cannot but increase the level of fractional slavery we already have.

Take a look at some of the popular arguments for slavery and compare them to arguments for nationalized health care. In each case the speaker illustrates a supposed tangible benefit. Does material comfort trump principle?

Argument Type	Slavery	Nationalized Health Care
Because others do it	John Calhoun: "There has never yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not live on the labor of the other"	Paul Krugman: "...every other advanced country offers universal coverage, while spending much less on health care than we do. "
Paternalism	Calhoun: "look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poor house."	Barrack Obama: "I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need"
Stability	Calhoun: "I venture nothing in predicting that the experience of the next generation will fully test how vastly more favorable our condition of society is to that of other sections for free and stable institutions"	Obama: "Now, that's what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan -- more security and more stability."
Economic	Chancellor Harper: "And what would be the effect of putting an end to the cultivation of these staples [cotton and rice], and thus annihilating, at a blow, two-thirds or three-fourths of our foreign commerce? Can any sane mind contemplate such a result without terror?"	Max Baucus: "We need to pass very strong, comprehensive healthcare reform this year...Otherwise American families are gonna pay half of their family income on health care premiums"

It is ironic that the practice of partial slavery is more advanced today in what are known as "the blue states". These states were once the liberators who sacrificed life and limb to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. Progressives in these states still see themselves as liberators. These political cartoons were published during the 2004 election in an attempt to link southern conservatives with slavery. Oh the irony:

(Click on image)

Also see this one