Is Healthcare a Privilege?
John Mackey writes:
Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?
A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter.
Do you really want to go there? Really? Ok, we’ll go there. Let’s review the first line of the declaration of independence:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Mr. Mackey, when was the last time you went without healthcare, without food, or without shelter? I have never gone without them either, but I imagine that any one of those situations would impede my “unalienable Rights”, the first of which is Life. Health is a rather important aspect of life.
The phrase Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is borrowed from writings by the English philosopher John Locke, whom as I understand it was very influential to the ideas and philosophies that guided the founding of our nation. John Lock writes:
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all [humankind], who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions…
Mackey continues:
Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care…Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor’s Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.
| Country | Population | # without health care | Percentage |
| Canada | 33 million | 830,000 | 2.5% |
| UK | 60 million | 1.8 million | 3% |
| US | 300 million | 46 million | 15% |
According to Mackey’s numbers, 2.5% of Canadians and 3% of UK citizens don’t have immediate access to health care. The US Census Bureau says 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance. Am I to understand that Mackey’s argument is that 2.5%-3% not having immediate access to health care is worse than 15% of Americans having access but being unable to afford it? (Do I see a connection to the food and shelter problem?)
Mr Mackey, you and I have had the privilege of being born into a country that affords us certain unalienable Rights. We have the moral obligation to ensure that everyone is guaranteed the same unalienable Rights as we have.
So when we talk about healthcare reform, I start with this assumption: everyone has the right to a full and healthy life. How we guarantee that is up for discussion. The current pseudo-market-based solution is not working for at least 15% of Americans, and doesn’t work very well for a lot more than that. Mackey argues that increased spending on reform might bankrupt us, but at least we’ll have our health.
2 comments
I agree with your point completely. I also would like to point out that the current solution can barely be called “psuedo-market-based” because of the fact that health insurance is used to pay for most health services.
That is, you pay a monthly premium to an insurance company, and the insurance company pays the hospitals & doctors for you. You have no say in the price of services, and the consumer is not in a position to “vote with their wallet” so to speak.
You don’t expect your car insurance to pay for your gas, or your house insurance to pay for a new LCD TV, so why is it ok that we expect health insurance to pay for everything health related? On the other hand, I also agree that we as a country have a moral obligation to protect our unalienable rights as stated; so I don’t have any good solutions :).
Though I suspect that subsidized mandatory catastrophic insurance coverage for all would be a start.
I think you are missing his point a bit with the “right to healthcare” – i think he is making the point that food & shelter are both more basic needs than healthcare, but our government does not have massive systems to provide for these needs, therefore why provide healthcare if these more basic needs are not met?
Anyhow, I can agree to what Dave has said about mandatory catastrophic coverage, however I don’t think that any ‘frills’ of our current healthcare system should be provided on my tax dollars. Should we collectively be paying for things like cosmetic surgery, impotence medications, or even procedures to correct poor lifestyle choices that people make? I think not.
Chronic diseases caused by ‘lifestyle choices’ such as smoking and obesity (granted, not always a choice) are certainly contributing to the higher costs of healthcare that everyone is facing. Insured or uninsured – I don’t see how any solution can be efficient, or even effective, long term without more responsibility being placed on the people using it. We should not have an “all you can eat buffet!” attitude towards our healthcare.
And lastly I want to say that what I want is reform not revolution in our healthcare system. I dearly hope that the system that is working well for most Americans is not scrapped – if this happens the process can hardly be called reform – let’s all be honest.
Oh and do you really trust our government to be in total control of a system that massive? Look what a good job they are doing with Social Security…
Speak your mind: