What is a right? Can you define it? Most of us have an amorphous idea of rights. I tend to be more libertarian with a couple of kinks thrown in here and there. To have complete liberty, one must be alone on an island somewhere. Then one can do whatever one wishes and will bear the responsibility and the consequences of ones choices. It is on the island that you will find the only intrinsic absolute. One has the here and now and one's past. That is IT! One has the right to make decisions that affect one's life, and one bears the consequences of those decisions. Add another person to the island. Now the stronger overall will rule the weaker to the extent of the strength of the stronger, the desire to influence of the stronger, and the tolerance of the weaker. The strength of which I speak is not necessarily physical, but it can be. Now what are the rights of each? They are each still bound by the intrinsic absolute of the decision of the moment. They still each bear the consequences. If the weaker follows the stronger and the stronger makes a bad decision, the weaker does bear the consequences of the bad decision made by the stronger. However, those consequences flow back further to the decision to submit to the stronger.
I listen to many of the conservative pundits. I agree with much of what they have to say. However, I start to get real angry when they start shoveling the rights by God horse manure. Now I am in no way an atheist. What I am is attentive to the most fundamental thing my religion states. Free Will. There are things that God wants of us, but he is hands off. For Pat Robertsons and Falwells that claim that some natural disaster is Devine retribution for some failing as a society, guys...who made YOU gods? Who are YOU to sit in judgement? For you Islamic adherents that like to use force to spread the message of Allah, I ask you this. Is Allah such an effeminate deity that he can't take care of things such as judgement for himself? God is hands off. Furthermore, if we distill it down to an issue of a decision in a moment, not even an atheist can argue. What we have beyond the intrinsic NOW are rights created by civilization.
Free speech, right to bear arms, searches and seizures are all rights created by our American Society. Does our being cry out for these freedoms? Perhaps, but that does not mitigate the fact that they are enjoyed because we value them as a people. This makes our rights all the more fragile - all the more precious.
So do you have a right to healthcare? If you are alone on the island, how does that work? There may be a civil right to healthcare if the society as a whole deems it so. However, societal rights are even more complex than the simple case of two people on an island. Now we have millions and millions. Let's look at a case of freedom of speech in society.
I have a freedom of speech. However, I am not on a desert island. How does my freedom of speech interplay with someone else's right to be secure in their person? If one has an absolute right of freedom of speech then one can threaten and intimidate. The other party has no recourse. However, by the same token, one can not have absolute security in their person. That would mean that any speech that made them angry or uncomfortable must be squelched. As a rule, the borderland between rights tends to be on a physical level. I can call you a dumb ass, but I can't threaten to physically harm you. I can tell others that I think you are stupid, but I may not tell falsehoods about you to cause damage to your standing amongst other men.
Let's look at another thing that some call a right. That thing is healthcare.
Healthcare is a product. It is a service. Should it be a right? That is for society as a whole to decide and for individuals to decide whether or not that will stand. Consider this. Unlike other rights that we have, healthcare IS a product and a service. This means that another human must labor to provide healthcare to someone. Labor and Invention are rooted in time. Time is a finite thing for any individual. To assert a right to a product or service is to assert a right to someones time. If a product or service is a right, then the person providing it has no choice but to provide the product or service. So now one person has the right to take part of someone's life. Is this where we want to go? Perhaps you say it is not healthcare but access....... We already have that. If you can pay the price that the provider requests, you can have any procedure you want. Do you call that evil? Why?
Do you say that the doctors and nurses will be paid by the government? Where is that money coming from? Will the doctor still be able to be in business for himself and not have to take what the government offers, but be able to charge what he wants? I would say not. If that is allowed the system falls apart even faster. The talent will go where the reward is.
So many people want health insurance to be that which pays everything medical. If people treated car insurance this way, all car repairs would be covered under insurance. Insurance is meant to protect against catastrophic events. It is not meant to cover a doc's visit for a cold. What we have done by pushing insurance down to the office visit level is to increase the price of the office visit. Now the fee for the office visit must also cover the cost of the paper pushing staff. What we have done is obfuscated the price for anything medical. When I was a child, I used to go to Dr. McLung or Dr. Coffey. We knew the office visit was going to be a certain amount. If a shot was involved, that was a certain amount. However, the corruption was proceeding even then.
It is also human nature to use something more freely if one does not attribute a concrete value to it. So many people with insurance go to the doctor for things that they would otherwise let time heal. This drives up costs as well. And the office visit fee not only pays for the doctors office paper pushers, it also has to account for those in the insurance company. Every middleman involved has his cost added to the tab. Do you really want government healthcare with government as an additional middleman?
Also we are already paying for medical care for others. Should we be? Should we be paying for treatment for the abusers of modern chemistry? Should we be paying for treatment for those who engaged in risky sexual behaviors? Both of these groups of people made a choice to engage in these activities. Both of these groups of people would protest my interference in their engaging of these activities. Each group would assert their right to their own individuality and choices. If I get no say in your behavior, why should I be forced to bear the financial repercussions of your behavior? I agree completely with Andrew Wilkow in the following statement. Your freedom to be you includes my right to be free from you.
The fact is as with anything that new drugs and treatments are expensive at first. With adoption and use, price goes down. The 16gb iPad wifi only is $500.00 right now. Five years from now, a tablet that dwarfs the $500 iPad in ability will cost substantially less. The fact that we are talking about things that save lives is irrelevant. Would you rather these things not come at all? Brilliant people are not going to invent and innovate under compulsion.
So if you have some disease and the price of treatment is too high, beg charity, friends, family, and those wealthy enough to pay. What of those before the treatment was invented? They suffered or died. They were not so greedy that in their grasping, they prevented the treatment from being invented. Are you so greedy that you feel if you can't have it, no one should? You are a fool if you think you can compel invention and innovation.
- Posted using The dark side of the shwartz.
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