That seems to be the mantra from the Left as we go through this first of the many Obamacare battles: health care is a “right.” Let’s be real about this: until at least January 2011, Obama and the Left will not stop until something crosses his desk. Our challenge is to slow them down or shrink the final bill’s scope to something small and safe (tort reforms, tax incentives, provisions for new doctors, or something like that).
What makes something a right? Rich Hrebic at the American Thinker had this to say on this issue yesterday:
A right is not a guarantee that the government (i.e., other people) will provide you something for free. We have the right to engage in religious expression, but that doesn’t mean that the government pays for the construction of the church…. You have the right to keep and bear arms, but don’t expect the government to provide you with a free firearm and bullets. You have the right to free speech, but the government won’t grant you free radio or TV air time. What makes something a right is not whether the government can force somebody else to pay for it. What defines something as a right is whether the government can or cannot prohibit you from doing it.
It was such an interesting point that it made Rush’s show today during the first hour. It’s very true. So many people have confused rights with entitlements — look at FDR’s Second Bill of Rights speech for the public birth of that concept into the mainstream American Left. Hrebic makes a further point that our individual right to choose our health care service based will actually be curtailed by a single-payer system! Our right to life will be observably diminished.
Rights are God-given and should be protected, not invented for political gain. Since the 1930s, entitlements have usually been just government-provided tokens catering to constituent selfishness which seeks to keep your votes coming back election after election. This current health care debate is not about expanding rights, it’s about creating a new entitlement which the Dems hope will keep the public feeding at their trough forever.
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A parable
One day a poor pregnant woman came to Republican Congressman.
“Oh, wise one” cried the woman. “I want to have an abortion. I have no money to raise this child”
The Republican Congressman gazed upon the poor woman and replied “No. Woman. The baby in your belly has a right to life. Go and have your baby and forget about an abortion”
So the woman had her baby.
The baby was born gravely sick.
It needed a doctor and expensive medical care.
So the woman returned to the Congressman
“My baby is sick. But I have no health insurance. My child needs expensive medical care. But I am poor and cannot afford a doctor nor the medical care that will keep him alive.”
The Republican congreswsman placed his hands on the poor woman’s head.
“Health care is not a right. It is a good.” He reminded her . “If you knew you could never afford health insurance, you should never have had your baby.”
The woman’s child died after much suffering.
A better parable.
A promiscuous woman gets knocked up during her third one-night stand of the week. She discovers that she’s pregnant and refuses to allow her convenience to take a back seat to the life of an innocent child. She goes to a hospital to get a taxpayer-funded saline abortion.
Fortunately, the abortionist botches the abortion and the child is rescued by a nurse. Unfortunately, the surgeon’s brutality leaves the child suffering from cerebral palsy for the rest of her life. (Unlike your parable, this actually happened. Look up Gianna Jessen).
One night, the child suffers a complication from her disease that requires life-saving surgery. The child’s loving parents who adopted her take her to the hospital, but there is no surgery that night. The waiting list is six months.
About a month later, the child clings to life. Her parents appealed a local bureaucrat’s decision to kick the child off the waiting list because the lives of non-disabled people are deemed more worthy of costly care. The parents appeal to the National Health Board and luckily, Board decided, by a vote of 5-4, that the child’s cerebral palsy was not a condition that made her life worthless. She can have the surgery when her turn arrives. Two months later, despite a brave battle, the child dies.
Three years ago, there were no waiting lists. But now we have Obamacare, but at least it’s “free.”