The Right to Health Care, Part I
by Richard
At the heart of the current debate is the core philosophical issue…
Is there an absolute right to health care?
John Mackey, the savvy and controversial CEO at Whole Foods (aka “Whole Paycheck”) has stirred a hornet’s nest, and incensed his uber-liberal customer base by denying that such a right exists in his Wall Street Journal editorial, “The Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare.” (8/11/09)
Let’s begin at the beginning…literally, the founding of our republic.
In George Washington’s original cabinet, there was a Secretary of War, a Secretary of State, An Attorney General, and a Secretary of the Treasury. That was it. All the subsequent additions to the cabinet were an expression of what the plurality wanted…not as inherent rights, but as embellishments on existing rights.
One could argue that the absolute rights guaranteed by the government at its inception were the rights to negotiate with other nation-states, to provide for the defense of the nation, to provide a system of impartial and fair justice, and to provide for prudent financial management and defense of the currency.
Yet there are basic and fundamental human needs that must be addressed…whether they are defined as needs, wants, or rights.
These include the requirement of food, shelter, and clothing…and of course, health care.
In order to examine the validity of the argument that health care is a right, let’s begin by comparing this “right” with the others just enumerated.
Let’s start with food. There is no advanced civilization without the capacity for agriculture that allows for storage of food. Without agriculture, we are back to being hunter-gatherers, with a life span of under thirty years.
Not much need for knee replacements or advanced imaging technology if you find that you are the hunted as well as the hunter, and no longer at the top of the food chain.
So, how has our government met this basic human “right”? The right to have food.
- Surprisingly, there is no “public option” to keep the private food companies “honest”. Unless you count the vast warehouses full of cheese purchased by the feds to inflate dairy prices.
There have been single provider food producers in history, but this is a model best sustained by totalitarian control. - Subsides exist at two levels. Food stamps for the poor…and wildly outrageous and egregious kickbacks and subsidies to wealthy corporate farmers. Take a wild guess as to which hand digs deeper into the public purse.
- Diversion of critical grain resources into politically correct synfuels like ethanol, requiring nearly a gallon of fuel input to produce a gallon of added output.
The result of FDA regulated food inspection, promotion and production is a national diet laced with salt, sugar, fat, and grease-that has produced an epidemic of obesity and its related, often preventable, chronic illnesses.Our food is literally making us sicker as a nation.
Not a promising start for a government intent on expanding our inherent rights.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:14 am
The FDA (when functioning as it’s supposed to function) is a rule-maker and enforcer. The FDA makes sure all foods have nutritional facts, that standards for “organic” labeling are met by organic growers, etc. And then it’s up to the people to buy their food, using (or, more often, ignoring) that information. The FDA is not responsible for the poor selection of the people when it comes to their nutrition.
Having said that, the FDA cannot function perfectly. Every 8 years or so, it’s good to reshake the top and get rid of the cronies (right or left-leaning). Also, as a government agency, it follows rules set by Congress, which is notoriously swayed by special interests — big farm corporations, ethanol producers, etc.
So what are the options? No FDA, no regulation, no labeling? That’s the libertarian stance. Nice theory, but they who is naive enough to think goods producers would be even remotely honest in marketing their products (”Lucky Lights. Doctors smoke them because they are safe!”). A strong, perfect FDA? That’s the far-left stance. Nice theory, but nobody can be perfect. A half-functional FDA that is constantly caught between the interchange or right- and left- administrations that alternate the influence of different special interests? Yes, because while imperfect, it allows for educated consumers to make effective decisions should they choose to make them.
A stronger government role in health care is equally essential: the private insurers are for-profit entities who can drop anyone on the fly for mere technicalities in their applications once they start to eat into their profit with costly claims; the doctor’s guild artificially limits the number of doctors in the market; nursing unions demand more and more pay for less and less work; personal injury lawyers go ga-ga over malpractice litigation. The system is a mess. Market forces have not fixed this mess, which is increasingly getting worse. Government will do a mediocre job, but it’s better than nothing.
And to any Republican who will undoubtedly malign whatever changes are made to health care, and whatever new government agency is created to run it/oversee it, I say this: if you have the balls, terminate the program when you come in power, as I hope you will when the Democrats start abusing their power. I know you won’t change much. Because you happily shout when in minority to get votes, but realize the necessity of the changes.
Much as Obama criticized many Busy policies that, now that he is president, he sees wisdom in perpetuating, and ignores his far-left wing.