Kate Southwood in the Huffington Post and writing from Norway asks why healthcare isn’t a right?
So if America is already spending more on health care than anyone else and if America’s health care technology is second-to-none, why isn’t health care a fundamental right? Why do I, an American citizen, have the right to health care only because I happen to live in a foreign country?
laying out a series of strawman arguments against healthcare being a right but never quite making the case that it is a right.
There are several reasons that I can think of that we shouldn’t think of healthcare as a right. The first is that healthcare is a private good. Defining it as a right would place that right in direct conflict with two other rights: the right to property and the right of healthcare providers to freedom from involuntary servitude. If there is no limit to what can be spent on healthcare, then it is possible that providing that right will seriously abridge the right to property. If there is a limit to what is to be spent on healthcare but no limit to how much healthcare must be delivered for that sum, then healthcare providers will be subjected to involuntary servitude to deliver it.
I have no knowledge or experience of Norway’s traditions in law but here when you have a right to something then you can go to court to secure that right. If there is a right to healthcare that means if you are denied some procedure, for example prostate cancer screening tests as in the UK, you could go to court to force the question. Can you do that in Norway? I have no idea.
If you can, then people in Norway have a right to healthcare as we reckon rights. If you can’t, then the Norse mean something different by rights than we do and the question is meaningless.
“There are several reasons that I can think of that we shouldn’t think of healthcare is a right. The first is that healthcare is a private good.”
Doesn’t that last beg the question?
No. A “private good” is a term of art in economics. Any good that is excludable (you can prevent people from consuming it) and rivalrous (consumption by one prevents consumption by others) is a private good.
My engaging in free speech does not interfere with your free speech. However, my taking up that hour of physician’s time prevents you from taking up the same hour.
I understand that, but we already treat access to healthcare as a public good with Medicare. BTW, I don’t think is follows from the fact that we both can’t share the same hour of a doctor’s time that healthcare, or access to, is a private good. What is a private good in your example is that hour of his time. This is an instance, I think, of the fallacy of compostion.
No, we don’t. It’s a benefit, not a public good.
This stuff is definitional, sam. If it’s rivalrous (we can’t both consume that same hour at once) or it’s excludable (we can’t be prevented from consuming it) it is by definition a private good. That the government can purchase it and distribute it does not make it a public good.
Ok, but I still don’t see why “X is a private good” entails “possession or access to X cannot be a right.” I own a handgun. You cannot own the same handgun (it’s ownership is rivalrous), Yet I do have a right to owning the handgun (at least in federal jurisdictions….). (I hope I’m not coming across as difficult — or, more likely, obtuse)
Your right to bear arms doesn’t mean that I have to buy a gun for you. Similarly, freedom of the press doesn’t mean that I am obligated to put you in the newspaper business. But that’s what people mean when they say there’s a right to healthcare.
There is a fundamental difference between a right and a value. Most of what I have read on these threads of Dave’s have been assertions of values, not rights. Values are interests shared by a significant group, which in any matter of significant public controversy will directly interact or conflict with other values.
Rights are transcendent values endowed with mystical qualities that assert their conclusion without need for explanation or accounting. At one point in time, Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that a right was something an individual was willing to fight for and defend, but he backed away, noting that even a dog will fight for a bone. (Not to mention, applicability issues from the Civil War) But I think his point was that a right was something that struck the nerve as a wrong when violated, without argument or analysis, not merely the intellectualization of the endowments of an ideal society.
I prefer to think of it as legislating morality. Most would consider it immoral if a lifeguard watched a person drown who was a foot outside of his “watch zone” so it’s simply not his job. Similarly I’d hope people would see it as immoral for a doctor to not provide emergency care because he may not be rewarded financially. We legislate morality all the time – and it fact it already is illegal for a hospital to refuse emergency service to anyone who may not be able to afford it.
If, then, the provider has a legislated obligation to provide emergency care for everyone, why do we as citizens not have the legislated obligation to pay for our own emergency insurance?
If I were to construct an argument for a health care right, I think it would be this:
No person shall be allowed by the government to suffer death or permanent disability for want of reasonably available health care.
Explanation: I’ve attempted to use the language of “negative” rights (the Bill of Rights is a document of negative rights — the government shall not . . .) for what is usually constructed as a pure positive rights (People have the right to be free from want, the elements, fear . . .) I’ve limited the right to specific severe ailments. I’ve limited the right to considerations of reasonable availability, which some might argue begs the question.
Rights are whatever we say they are within the constraints of the Constitution. The people through their legislators can declare a right to candy.
If I treat you like a child, does that make you a child?
Here’s an question, if we treat a public good like a private good what do think will happen?
Yay for slavery! How far do we go with Sam? Draft them and make treating people compulsory? You will treat him, or else?
Personally, I want to have legislators declare up is really down.
And yet, we don’t. Social Security is not a right nor have we considered healthcare a right nor food nor lodging. Nor is education beyond high school. It seems to me higher education is a much better candidate for a right than healthcare.
In my view we should treat healthcare much as we do Social Security (and following PD’s lead, above): healthcare for all is a value that we implement through specific benefits. Considering it a right would have ramifications I don’t think we want to deal with.
For example, if you want to start taking a particular pharmaceutical to deal with some health condition or other, would your right to healthcare include that? Whether it’s effective or not? Whether your physician has prescribed it? Or would only government-approved therapies be within your right?
We don’t usually think of the freedom of speech as the right to government-approved speech.
It’s easy to worst-case it. But following your primary education example, while there are surely some abusive demands on schools, we haven’t yet started offering high school kids free convertibles as opposed to big yellow buses. The unreasonable demands are dealt with. And it seems the right (I don’t know that we’ve made it a right under law everywhere, but in effect,) to primary education has improved society quite a bit.
If we decide as a society that health care is a right, I don’t see any constitutional objection. There may be practical objections, obviously, but we are able to decide whether to add to the roster of rights.
And I guess I don’t see what is frightening about this. So we decide that US citizens have a right to reasonable health care. Does the earth go spinning into the sun the next day? Most advanced nations treat health care as a right whether they make that so explicitly in law or not. And yet France is not a barren wasteland overrun by post-apocalyptic warlords.
As a practical fact we’ve already decided that Americans have a right to sufficient nutrition. We don’t let people starve. And we’ve decided that they have a right to emergency care. We won’t let them bleed out in a gutter. We’ve decided that they have a right to a reasonably safe workplace. No more Triangle Shirtwaist. Whether as a matter of law, or just as a matter of practice, we’ve defined all sorts of things as rights.
So why exactly are we drawing the line at chemotherapy?
Is education a right or benefit that society has decided to help provide because private provision is too little? A case of positive externalities.
Well by this line of reasoning we can make it a right to kill people named michael reynolds. After all, they are just a bunch of words that mean what we want them to mean and if we squint up enough we can’t even see the words in the Constitution.
You did note Dave’s point that if you are consuming some portion of health care, then someone else is not consuming it. If you consume the drug, procedure or whatever, then someone else who has that need cannot. In some cases they may die so that you may live. Its really not all that different from saying, “We’ll kill these people so those people can live.” It isn’t quite as blunt or personal, but its pretty much the same. By saying we have the right to free speech I don’t see a similar problem.
In short, declaring a private good to be a right means you are quite willing to violate other rights in doing so. That is the problem. You haven’t provided any explanation as to why it wont be a problem other than some vague hand waving about what you think is in the Constitution (which is almost surely different from what I think is in the Constitution).
Okay, that was stupid.
Nobody is saying switching to the French system would bring about the apocalypse. And it isn’t clear that health care is a right in France or elsewhere, other than a public benefit or a private good where the decision was made not to rely solely on the market to provide the good.
Uhhhmmm, no I’m pretty sure tha malnutrition is still a problem. And while people don’t starve in the U.S. that probably has more to do with charities and the low cost of food than anything else. And that low cost is in many ways due to gasp the market.
Just because we don’t declare health care to be a right doesn’t mean we can’t also decide we don’t want it to be provided entirely by the market. You’ve set up a false dichotomy.
Yay for slavery! How far do we go with Sam? Draft them and make treating people compulsory? You will treat him, or else?
A slippery slippery slope!
We’ve already gone as far as we need to on the doctor side is the point of the post. Citizens should be obligated to pay for it if the doctor is already obligated to provide it. We are already providing emergency care to everyone without rationing, it shouldn’t be crazy to mandate people to pay for it (and hence don’t go bankrupt when they end up needing it).
Steve:
Well by this line of reasoning we can make it a right to kill people named michael reynolds.
I’m puzzled. Are you dumb enough to believe this? Or are you convinced I’m dumb enough not to notice how dumb it is?
In fact there is a constitutional impediment to this. No, we can’t decide to go around murdering people at random. We can decide to extend the blessings of liberty in new ways. Like when we decided to violate “property rights” by freeing the slaves.
Want to know how I know we can do it? We’ve done it many times.
You did note Dave’s point that if you are consuming some portion of health care, then someone else is not consuming it.
Yes, I noted it. And I understood he was making a definitional point. He was not arguing that this necessarily ended discussion. Logically one could extend this to education. If my son has a teacher’s ear then your daughter won’t.
But in the real world this is of course irrelevant. Because we hire more teachers. Just as we hire more doctors. There is not a fixed supply of either. So Dave is making a terminological point which you’ve decided means something literal in the real world.
You do this a lot: confuse theory and theoretical discussions with actual events in the actual world. The world where we can train and hire more doctors.
Uhhhmmm, no I’m pretty sure tha malnutrition is still a problem. And while people don’t starve in the U.S. that probably has more to do with charities and the low cost of food than anything else. And that low cost is in many ways due to gasp the market.
In your attempt to disprove my point you actually make my point by conceding that we don’t allow people to starve. Which you will note is just what I said. Right? You know, when I said, and I quote: We don’t let people starve.
Yes, the market deserves a lot of the credit. I wonder those socialists in Sweden don’t starve? How about those commies in Germany? The reds in the UK?
And do you think maybe food stamps have a little something to do with people not starving? Do ya?
Incidentally, if you can show me anywhere I’ve evidenced a dislike of markets, please point it out to me. I spent all today negotiating a deal in . . . gasp . . . the free market. For a product I sell. For money. And I’m the one setting up false dichotomies?
As much as you dislike it, Steve, government has a role. It handles defense. It handles the borders. It handles things like air traffic and manages the parks and all those useful things. If I swim out too far the government will send the Coast Guard to rescue me. (No doubt you’d call that an exercise of government’s monopoly on violence.)
Government also makes sure our drugs are reasonably safe, and our products don’t kill us, and our cars all have seat belts and our old people have medicine and our children don’t starve.
Now, I get that you don’t want the government to do any of those things because you’re Atlas and you want so much to shrug off the crushing weight of . . . I’m sorry, do you actually pay any net income tax? Because I’ve noticed that an awful of people who whine about the cost of government actually aren’t paying for it.
In any case, I understand that you think Markets =Magic and Government = Evil, but the rest of us, I’m going to say, oh, 95% of us, don’t want to blindly trust the same free market idiots who just crashed the economy of the world.
@micheal Reynolds:
Don’t forget the FDIC. Last time we had a crisis of this magnitude people overreacted and pulled every cent from the bank, creating the self fulfilling prophecy of 95% of banks failing. THAT’S what really happens when markets are totally free. That’s why anarcho-capitalism is just as dangerous as socialism. That’s why I thank God every day that Steve Verdon and Nancy Pelosi can never totally get their way.
Sam:
We can only pray that they don’t spawn.
How would you define the difference between a right and an obligation?
Steve
What is a right? How is it defined?
I’ll give that a stab, Alex. Something is considered a right when attempts to restrict, abridge, or regulate it on the part of the federal, state, or local governments are subject to strict scrutiny. Additionally, as is clear from the arguments made by the advocates of the idea, in the case of healthcare those without the wherewithal to pay for it themselves would have it paid for them out of tax dollars.
I think that considering healthcare a right would be highly imprudent for any number of reasons including it would be ruinous, it would be inconsistent with rights doctrine in the United States, it would open a can of worms and the can is inconsistent with a free society.
As I’ve written before I think the better model is Social Security, which is not a right but a benefit. As PD Shaw noted above the better characterization would be a value.
I believe there are all sorts of good utilitarian arguments for both Social Security and basic healthcare for all and I support both of those things.
Well, Dave, I’d be willing to bet that most people arguing this issue would disagree with that definion. I myself don’t care for the term “rights” because it’s laden with mystical mumbo-jumbo without relation to any sort of empirical reality.
Your definition of right, which is legal in nature and defined by the legislature is a much better definition that can actually be evaluated. As such, I doubt that too many will accept it.
When I’ve asked for a definition I’ve typically got more outrage that I’d ask for a definition than definition. That would be bad enough but my sense is that those demanding that healthcare is a right are attempting to bootstrap from aspirational definitions to legalistic ones without the spadework of a definition that could actually be enacted into law.
Art. 1, Sec. 8, right after the “common defence (sic)” clause comes the “general welfare” one.
Obviously, the Framers/Founding Fathers thought a great deal about the general welfare in the context of national security — that’s why they iterated the general welfare as a legal, protected constitutional right.
I guess it’s up to us and the Congress to argue whether that includes the equal right to health care, not just for the privileged.
In any case, I wonder this: So, how come none of you anti-public option health insurance legal eagles are arguing about the socialistic public taxdollar going toward providing for the “common Defence”?
How about a little consistency and a lot less sophistry, a.k.a as “BS”?
michael there is no doubt about how dumb you are and how smart you think you are.
You just got done saying we can make a right out of anything and everything. See your quip about making candy a right. Don’t back peddle now that you’ve been caught being an idiot. Full steam ahead!
Sure we can. First we remove the right against murdering people, or we specificy that the new right to murder people named michael reynolds is not in violation of that part of the constitution.
Yes, I’ve already noted that education is:
1. Not a public good,
2. Is provided by the government, in part, because pure private provision has been deemed insufficient.
You have yet to address these responses, but I doubt you have either the capability or the willingness too.
No, we don’t retard. We are busy firing many of them here in California, the same state you live in. Or didn’t you notice?
Look, at your age it is long past time you figured out we can’t grow the world’s food supply in a flower pot in your back yard. Resources are limited, and we wont simply provide more of it simply because you like and think you shouldn’t have to pay for it.
Yes, and you just can’t grasp fundamental and obvious facts like resources are limited. You’re mind set is this: U.S. is rich, thus we can have whatever we want. Both theory and the real world tell us this is not true.
And yes, in theory we can train and hire more doctors (funny you resort to theory while scolding me for using it you jackass), but the reality is that it is very, very difficult (you uninformed twit).
But we haven’t made food a “right”. Not by a long shot. That was my point and as usual it went right over your head.
Look, just stick to writing fiction.
well, i really need help on this project i am doing, yet i don’t understand what to do. if i got really good points about ‘should healthcare be a roght’ i would understand this much greater. also, if i may ask, when did healthcare even become a right? if you could please email me with good ideas on the opposition side. it would be greatly appreciated. once again my email adress is alicia101@live.ca. thank you to who ever helped me alot!