A simple point: why health care is not, and can never be, a "right"

Health care is a set of goods and services that are procured through payments.

Is the right to life, or liberty, or the pursuit of happiness facilitated by the transfer of funds? Of course not. Our country's founders would never have countenanced the mandated delivery of services compelled by an authoritarian, centralized government. That was precisely the type of system they were trying to escape in the British Crown.

Thought Experiment: If Health Care Is a Right

If you live in the village of Curmudgeon, Montana, where there are no doctors, will the government compel a doctor to move to the area?

If you've received multiple heart bypass operations, chemotherapy and dialysis, yet you still won't stop smoking three packs and eating a dozen Twinkies a day, will the government guarantee care for your "preexisting" conditions?

If you're a health insurance company's CEO and the government mandates premiums, who you must cover, what kind of coverage you must offer, and the margins you are permitted to make, do you really think you can stay in business? Hint: in all of recorded history, find a place or time where price controls worked. Don't worry, I'll wait here while you check.

If you're a doctor in a specialty area and you decide that the government's reimbursements no longer pay enough for you to stay in business (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, etc.), what happens when there are no longer enough specialists in your field to handle the demand? Will the government forcibly require you to practice?

If you're a drug company's CEO and the government sets limits on the prices you can charge and dictate where your research money goes through its reimbursement schedules, how will new, unproven and cutting-edge drugs -- which require massive risk-taking -- get developed? (This may explain why roughly 75% of all pharmaceuticals are invented in the United States, not the faux Utopias of England or Canada).

What is health care?

Health care is an infinitely complex series of transactions facilitated by doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, hospital systems, brokers, third-party networks, caregivers, volunteers and others.

The Democrats want to nationalize this entire system, and set up small committees of central planners who will formulate all of the rules, set prices, dictate treatments, and proscribe the activities of every kind of market participant, including patients.

Can a tiny group of Harvard-educated elites, serving as central planners similar to the Politburo, replace millions of decisions based upon free will?

Health care consists of goods and services, which must be paid for like any other. And goods and services simply cannot be a "right", unless you are willing to relive the horrors of the Soviet Union's gulags, Pol Pot's killing fields or Hitler's brand of medicine.

Because when you replace voluntary transactions with central planning, you are replacing liberty with tyranny.


Related: Canada's health care system is a poor model for the U.S..