Health Care is a Right?

One of the few decent questions last night was whether or not health care was a right, duty, or responsibility. McCain believed it was a responsibility while Obama thought it was a right. Now, the way I interpret a right is two fold 1) anything that is a right enumerated in the Constitution and 2)anything that the government can't take away from you. In other words, a right is NOT something that someone else gives you.

Given this criteria, classifying health care as a right fails on both levels. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that everyone has a right to health care. Furthermore, it is very difficult to understand how health care can be a right when health care is something someone else must provide for you. By Obama's logic, each American has the right to have a doctor treat them and make them better. For Obama to say that health care is a right likely has more than one founding father rolling over in their grave. That's because the Founding Fathers were deeply afraid of a central government usurping power.

That's exactly what classifying health care as a right does. For instance, Barack Obama made it clear last night that under his administration it would be against the law for any parent not to have health insurance for their children. However one feels about whether or not a parent should provide their children with health insurance, how do we all feel about the government forcing the parent to provide it?

Think about this. How will we all go about making sure that this right is carried out? If someone can't provide health insurance for themselves, then the government provides it for them. The government will provide it for them. Of course, if the government gets into the business of providing health insurance then the government expands, consolidates power, and does exactly what the Founding Fathers feared the federal government would do.

It is actually amazing that anyone, let alone, a Presidential candidate would ever consider health care a right. To consider it a right would be require a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitution. More importantly, once health care is classified as a right where does it stop? Soon, Barack Obama will proclaim that housing is a right. Government will provide apartments and homes for people. How about clothing? Everyone has the right to clothing, and so the government will provide that as well. The way in which Socialist and Communist states get started is when the government classifies things as rights, and then deems, that it is the government's role to provide it. Soon, the government provides everything and we have a full blown nanny state. Never was it more clear just how dangerous Barack Obama is then in that answer. As the old saying goes

any government powerful enough to give you everything is powerful enough to take it away

That is the sort of government that Barack Obama envisions.