Fundamental Human Rights and Health Care Reform
As stated in the Constitution, inalienable human rights are those which are endowed by our Creator; or in other words, those which can neither be given nor taken away by other people. Chief among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are intangible things. They cannot be bought or sold. They are fundamental, meaning simply that they are an extension of humanity itself. Just by being a living person, you have the right to make your own choices, to speak freely of your opinion, and to seek out and protect your own liberty and freedom to do whatever makes you happy, so long as you don’t inhibit another person’s right to do the same.
A good, on the other hand, is a tangible thing. It’s something that is desirable to others and has tangible value. It’s not something that you innately have at birth just by virtue of being alive. You must trade something of value or give something up to obtain it, primarily money, labor or other goods. Likewise, something of value must be given or traded to create it. A basic example would be food. Yes, people need food to survive, but they do not have an intrinsic right to food. They must give up their time and energy to earn it, to work for it. If they don’t grow and make their own food, they must otherwise earn something to trade with the farmer, who invested his efforts into growing the food.
Similarly, health care is a good. It costs labor and money to provide health care, and it costs money to obtain it’s benefits. Yes, people need health care to survive illness and to heal wounds, but the fact alone that people benefit from something does not elevate its status to a fundamental human right. By the same logic, one could argue that because a Ferrari is one of the finest cars manufactured in the world, everyone would benefit from owning and driving one, and so declaring that a Ferrari is a fundamental human right and everyone must have one. Health care is not an extension of humanity, it is a benefit of human ingenuity and the drive to succeed.
Health care exists only because humans discovered treatments for illnesses through hard work and extraordinary investments of time and money to provide their treatment services for money in return. And the reason that treatment in our country is of such extraordinary calibre compared to that which can be found in other countries is simple. No other country offers the same opportunity for success as the U.S. It’s the reason why this country was founded. It’s the reason that this country has attracted the brightest minds and the most innovative, hard-working people in any economy ever. People are motivated to innovate in this country because they have the right to what they create and to the benefits of their creations. This kind of liberty was unheard of prior to the founding of our country.
But it seems that the people who write our laws have abandoned the laws that govern them. The Constitution is very clear in enumerating the powers of our federal government. In fact, our Founders went so far as to list the specific powers which the federal government does have, because what was more important to them was to emphasize that its powers are severely limited. They specify that any power not specifically granted to the federal government lies with the people and the states.
The Health Care Reform that was passed by our Congress this evening is just another of so many previous unconstitutional actions to which its name has been attached. It paves the way for the federal government to take unprecedented control over what American individuals have invested so much of their own time, energy and money to create. I can think of nothing less American than that.
One would argue that the health care system is broken, and something had to be done to fix it. And I would agree wholeheartedly. However, the problem was not greedy insurance companies and health care providers. It was certainly not that there was too little government regulation. The problem was that our federal government overstepped its bounds long ago when it got involved in the private economics of health care in the first place. The problem of high costs to health care and high barriers to entry into health insurance programs is the involvement of federal government. Health care is expensive to provide, and expensive to obtain. Health insurance is expensive, but not out of the same necessity. Insurance is about spreading risk. The more spread out the risk, the lower the cost. But it was our federal government that thought it was smarter than the free market. It got involved and then long-lasting problems were created - the very problems that they now address by taking more control, and exercising greater power. They are proficient, at least, at making more work for themselves and appearing useful.
The people need to take back their country. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that our legislators work for us. When they pass a bill to spend $900 billion, we need to understand that those are our dollars. We paid them to the government in taxes. Our government has no money besides that which we pay it. Do we ever ask ourselves, “was it in my best interest to invest in that enormous expenditure?” Or more importantly, do we ask ourselves, “is it under their Constitutional authority to make the decision of how my hard-earned dollars are spent?” The Constitution is supposed to protect the people from their government. If followed as precisely and meticulously as it was intended to be, it would have been a safety net against all of the decisions that have hurt our lives, liberty and our pursuits of happiness. We wouldn’t have to ever ask ourselves if what was being done was in our best interest because the government would have no Constitutional authority to make any decision other than those which protect our individual liberties.
Unfortunately for us, it seems we are too far gone to simply course-correct. The change that we need seems nearly as radical as it was when our country was founded. A full return to Constitutional rule and to the republic that was given us so few years ago would be a tremendous shock to our system, and the effects would be far-reaching. It’s time to start over in so many ways. Start by demanding that the Constitution reign supreme, and settle for nothing less. The Founders would be turning over in their graves if they could see how bastardized the country they gave us has become. There is no other America, and we have no choice but to fix it. If we don’t, we have nowhere else to go. Stand up for your true, fundamental human rights and stop conceding them to your government. Our next revolution is far overdue.
