The Risks of a "Right" to Healthcare

IC ^ | August 10, 2009 | Deal W. Hudson

[NYer]

 

Through the official statements of the USCCB, the Catholic bishops assert that health care is a "basic human right." Since the release of their 1981 pastoral letter on health and health care, the bishops have consistently argued that the federal government is responsible for establishing "a comprehensive health care system that will ensure a basic level of health care for all Americans."

 

Since millions are uninsured in the current system, they argue, it is necessary for the federal government to remedy this denial of the right to health care by ensuring "adequate funding for this basic level of care through a national health insurance program."

 

The need for universal health care, guaranteed by the federal government, is so deeply felt among the bishops and other Catholic leaders that even the prospect of abortion funding has yet to evoke much of a public protest against the bills presently in the House and Senate. Apart from official letters from Justin Cardinal Rigali and Bishop William F. Murphy, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York is the only bishop who has spoken out strongly against the bills due to their abortion provisions.

 

The presence of such funding alone should be sufficient to quell Catholic support for the legislation -- but so far, it hasn't. Perhaps more Catholics would question the necessity of the present suggestion for health care reform if they realized the central argument -- health care as a human right -- is muddled and, therefore, dangerous.

 

To assert health care is a human right is the beginning, rather than the end, of the debate about whether universal health care insurance should be provided by the federal government. To say citizens have a right to a good -- in this case, medical care -- always necessitates our obligation to remove unreasonable obstacles to obtaining it, but it does not necessitate that the good in question be provided by the government.

 

To assert the right to health care as the end of the argument leaps over both prudential reasoning and the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which stipulates that a social problem should first be dealt with at a local level before being addressed at higher, governmental levels.

 

Defenders of government-funded health care argue that subsidiarity now demands that the federal government provide what the present system of public and private coverage has not. Private insurance companies are labeled as "greedy," along with the employers who have cut back, or eliminated, health care benefits. The only way to secure the health care right, they say, is by handing it over to the federal government.

 

 

For a moment, let's assume that the assertion of a right to health care is sufficient to establish the necessity of universal care funded by the federal government. Will this provide a solution to the problem of respecting the right to health care? On the contrary: If you give away for free unlimited amounts of a good thing, there will be such an insatiable demand that even the government will not have the resources to satisfy it.

 

The rationing of health care services is inevitable. Since government-run health care cannot supply all citizens with the health care they desire, many will complain their right to health care is being denied. The government will respond by saying that it reserves the right to determine what a citizen's right to "basic" health care means, in terms of actual medical treatment.

 

Under the proposed legislation, the federal government will be making the decision about when and where to deny individual requests for health care. The complaints formerly made about private insurance carriers will be directed by the federal bureaucracy. The problem will not be solved, merely relocated.

 

Giving the responsibility for adjudicating the meaning of the health care right to the government poses obvious problems for Catholics, and should be a deal-breaker for the bishops. We can be sure its rationing will limit medical care for the elderly. We can also be sure it will include abortion and euthanasia counseling.

 

Catholics will be handing the morally charged responsibility of medical treatment to political leadership whose operating assumptions about the human person are antithetical to Catholic social teaching. The political leadership in both the Congress and the White House has never been more pro-abortion. That same leadership is now revealing its support for what they euphemistically call "end-of-life" counseling.

 

Not only will the proposed legislation be unable to secure the health care right as asserted by the bishops, but it also will refract the notion of health care itself through a first principle that is exactly the opposite of the Catholic Church's: "The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death" (Dignitas Personae).

 

There is no doubt that the deficiencies in the present health care system must be addressed. Most of all, those presently uninsured need to be folded into a new system of universal health coverage; but this must be done without eliminating their individual choice. The goal of universal coverage can be reached without handing our choices about medical care over to a federal government that does not understand the meaning of life and death.

[NYer]

Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster).

[NYer]

Ping!

[ExTexasRedhead]

http://www.breitbart.tv/father-of-handicapped-son-received-threats-after-confrontation-with-rep-dingell/

Share with as many as you can. This Congressman must be sent packing.

[Rodebrecht]

A right is something which can be acquired from nature and does not involve theft. Health care is a good. People need to learn the difference.

[marron]

There is certainly a role for the church in all this.

Whatever system we arrive at, whether government, or private, or some hybrid system, it can not be divorced from morality or it becomes a nightmare.

Doctors, administrators, insurance execs, nurses, government suits deciding who gets what care (and they already exist whether you know it or not and they already do their damage whether you know it or not)... in the end the decisions that determine your health care are made by human beings. The church needs to fight every day to build a culture that upholds basic morality and a basic love for life and a love for the good.

So many people hope to build a system that can run on autopilot. There is no substitute for a moral men and women at every level of every job. There is no perfect system, they all depend in the end on the integrity of the people who work in it. Either these people are prepared to defend life or they are not. Remove conscience and respect for life from your system and you’ve created a nightmare.

[NYer]

Health care is a good. People need to learn the difference.

I agree. 30 years ago, I used to travel to Italy and France on a regular basis. They already had national health care programs which were funded by a VAT (value added tax). Essentially, the way this worked is that purchases of clothing, furniture, etc. were assessed a 25% tax. Those visiting the country would pay the tax but after check-in at the airport, would present their receipts and receive a refund on the exorbitant taxes. As a result, shops did good business with tourists while the locals learned to live with one pair of shoes or a sofa that would last 30 years.

The true impact of such a system hit home one year when my mil was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Under the socialized medical system, she was placed on a lengthy waiting list for surgery. She would have died had we not intervened. A "gift" of $5,000 was sufficient to get her "bumped up" to the top of the list. The surgeons hoped to salvage a small portion of the stomach but found some bad cells and removed the entire organ. She not only survived the surgery but lived to 90.

This is what we can expect with any socialized health care program. Those with the money to pay, will find slots at the top of the list, while those who are poorer, will die waiting for surgery.

The most amazing example of socialized medicine that I have ever seen, was broadcast by PBS back in 1976! In Sweden, medicine had become so specialized that when an individual arrived at the clinic, they would be confronted with a panel of specialities from which to make a selection. If one had pain in an area in between two of those specialities, they were out of luck.

A national program of socialized medicine is NOT the way to go!

[trisham]

Well said!

[iowamark]

Rights are those things granted by God; among which Americans count life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It sounds very nice to say that people have a right to food, water, clothing, shelter, medical care. However, because all of those things cost money, this implies that people have a right to other people’s money and labor. Christ taught charity but not a Robin Hood type of theft.

[jimcarroll]

Well, I’m a health care worker.

A “right” is not a “right” if it imposes an obligation to take what one person has earned and to give it to another.

But since we’ve transcended the “old” definition of rights, finding in the process a “right to privacy” that takes the life of an unborn child, and a “right to home ownership” that wound up taking about a third of most individual retirement accounts’ values with the ensuing, inevitable crash, I have a question.

Since I am a health care worker, it seems everyone now has a “right” to the benefit of my learning and labor. So, you Bishops who’ve decided about this “right”, when it comes to the Vows, “Poverty, Chastity and Obedience”, is there any wiggle room on the “chastity” part?

[ducdriver]

You are so correct. If it’s a right, then government cannot take it away (which we all know they will when your life becomes “not worth living” — there is a German expression for that that came out of Nazi Germany). I cannot remember it just now.

[TASMANIANRED]

Health care as a right is totally bogus.

It is totally dependent on some bright young man /woman devoting 8-12 years of their young life in school to be able to deliver health care.

When you turn them into slaves they will choose some other field just like they did in Great Britain.

In GB most of the doctors are from formerly British Colonies...Many of them Muslim...A few of them are terrorists like the ones that tried to car bomb the airport a few years ago.

Of course when the best and the brightest go into some other field..Then the 2nd tier that couldn't have gotten into med school with legitimate competition will be the next round of doctors.

Frankly I'd rather take my chances with home surgery than trust my life to someone that took remedial English on their first few years of college.

[John Locke]

Lebensunwertes Leben

Literally, "life unworthy of life". It predates the Nazi regime; the phrase was coined by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche in a book published in 1920.

[ducdriver]

Thanks for the info, and for the source.

[John Locke]

Lebensunwertes Leben

Literally, "life unworthy of life". It predates the Nazi regime; the phrase was coined by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche in a book published in 1920.

[CTrent1564]

John Locke:

Good post, more broadly, both Hoche and Binding were both part of the eugenics movement that started in the late 19th and early 20th century, of which of course Margaret Sanger, the “founder and patron saint” of Planned Parenthood was also part of.

Apparently, one of Hoche’s relatives were later killed by the Nazi euthansia program, which was largely based on his works of the 1920’s, and it is reported that he privately criticized it, ohhh, the liberal double standard.

[markomalley]

I think that there should be a basic right to healthcare. But I don’t think that my definition of a “right” is the same as the USCCB’s definition.

If something is a “right”, that means that government should not interfere with your ability to exercise that “right.”

For example, we have a right to free speech. That means that government should not interfere in our ability to exercise that right.

We have a right to freedom of assembly. That means that government should not interfere in our ability to exercise that right.

And, we should have a right to health care. That means that government should not interfere in our ability to receive health care.

On the other hand, just because we have a right to do something DOES NOT mean that government, or anybody else, has to DO something for us...it just means that government should not PREVENT something.

Using those same examples:

We have a right to freedom of speech. While that means that government may not interfere with our right to exercise that speech, it DOES NOT mean that government must provide us a bullhorn, television station, radio station, or other tool to allow us to exercise that right.

We have a right to freedom of assembly. While that means that government may not interfere with our right to assemble, it DOES NOT mean that government must provide us a raised platform, nor does it mean that government must provide us a meeting room or convention center, nor does it mean that government must bus the participants of that assembly to the place where the meeting is held.

Likewise, should health care be considered a basic human right, that means while that government should not prevent us from receiving health care, it does not mean that government should drive us to the hospital, provide the doctor, or pay for the prescriptions.

The ironic part about this is that government’s proposed control of health care will actually strip people of a RIGHT to health care. Because of the universal control of the government on healthcare (via the “healthcare exchange”), government rules on covered or non-covered services will actually result in people effectively being denied the ability to have access to health care that they either need or want.

So the bishops’ support of this plan will result in a denial of health care rights.