Life, Liberty and Health Care?
Listening to the Democrats speak these days might leave one with the impression that health care is a God given right that every American, not to mention every citizen, should be entitled to. Now I understand the arguments - and I agree that every American should have health care available to them if they want it. But I disagree with the Democratic assessment that we are entitled to it.
Health care has always been - and will always be a privilege. Rights, like freedom of speech or worship, are things that in a perfect state of nature exist without human construction (in other words they aren’t social constructs - well speech and to an extent worship are, but not the freedom of). The means of taking these rights away is the real social construct because it requires unnatural behavior. But health care isn’t present in this state of nature. It’s something we’ve invented to prolong our lives - and to increase our own happiness.
We can privilege every American with it (and hopefully not by making our system in to a complete socialized mess) but it remains a privilege.
Posted under Health Care by Will Gries on Monday, April 14th 2008; 7:09 pm