Is Healthcare a Right? Not if Rights are Pre-existing Conditions

Eduardo Suastegui
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read

Listen in on any healthcare (a.k.a., #ObamaCare or #RepealReplace) debate, and the discussion eventually lands on a high-sounding claim. Healthcare is a right. Put up, or shut up. OK, that last part is my cynical reading between the lines, but you get the point.

But is healthcare a right? You know, the store of stuff we are “endowed” with?

An interesting read on this topic leads me to propose a straight-up test to decide test whether something is a right. If it is given by government, it is not a right, but a benefit.

How do I know this? Read the Bill of Rights: does it instruct Congress (government) to give people their rights? Nope. It simply says that they cannot be interfered with. Take the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Notice the word “give” (or synonyms thereof) anywhere in there. No? You only see “respecting,… prohibiting,… abridging”? Let’s try the Second Amendment:

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There it is: “not… infringed.” And what about this “right of the people”??? Where did that strange notion come from? It almost sounds like it was there… all along? Really?

In light of this construction, let us formulate what a right to healthcare might sound like if the founders had included it in the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law prohibiting the right to healthcare.

or

The right of the people to healthcare shall not be infringed.

Interesting how much of what the legislative branch has instituted in the name of increased access to healthcare might arguably be unconstitutional under either of those fictitious healthcare rights…

If that does not convince you, look further back to the Declaration of Independence, and you’ll see where rights come from. Even if you find the existence of a creator troublesome or distasteful, it is clear where rights do not come from. Not from government. Not even from the Bill of Rights, which didn’t exist at the time of the Declaration’s writing.

Read the Declaration of Independence one more time, and you’ll notice something very interesting (especially when it comes to healthcare). Rights are a pre-existing condition. They come before government, not from it.

Now look at every other non-enumerated right we are calling “rights” these days. They all come or derive from government. They all go away with a vote and a stroke of a pen, or they fizzle when the budget blows up. That’s not the kind of right I want. I don’t want my rights to be so easily taken away. Do you?

Thankfully, rights are transcendent, inherent, not a human creation, and certainly not handed out by government as feel-good candy.

Short-short: the progressive movement has swindled us with a very fine game of conflation, murkying the difference between rights and benefits.

Perhaps after dispossessing ourselves of that confusion we can move on to a non-self-righteous-indignation-laced discussion about what are good benefits, and what are some safe and sane ways to pay for them.

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Written by

When he is not bemoaning the state of our Republic, Eduardo unwinds by writing fiction, which you can review at: http://eduardosuastegui.com

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