Health Care and Rights

Michael F. Cannon has a very thought-provoking piece at National Review Online today called A “Right” to Health Care?

Some of the problems with socialized medicine that Cannon identifies are ones we're already familiar with, but here are some others that don't get as much press:

A third difficulty is the incentives created by a right to health care. Patients would demand far more medical care because additional consumption would cost them little. Higher tax rates would discourage work and productivity, yielding less economic growth and wealth.

Pushing down the compensation of medical professionals would discourage many — and many of the brightest — from entering the field of medicine. Divorcing their compensation from the satisfaction of their patients would reduce the quality of care.

As in other nations, policymakers would discourage medical innovation because every new discovery puts them in the uncomfortable position of either increasing taxes or saying “no” to patients.

The paradox of a right to health care is that it discourages the very activities that help deliver on that right.

We have already seen some of these effects in countries with socialized medicine.

Not to diminish the practical considerations of socialized medicine, consider the very principle of a health care "right." A right to access is one thing; a right to that service itself without cost is fundamentally at odds with our Constitution and the American way.

This is something I examined in a Rapid City Journal column on a "right" to education a while back:

Rights are usually good things, but what does a “right” look like? Typically, a “right” doesn’t cost another person anything. For instance, you have a right to free speech, but you don’t have a right to force taxpayers to buy you a newspaper or TV station to broadcast your speech.

You have the right to keep and bear arms, but you don’t have the right to force the taxpayers to buy you a gun or pay for your shooting lessons.

Or as Cannon puts it:

The fundamental problem with the idea of a right to health care is that it turns the idea of individual rights on its head. Individual rights don’t infringe on the rights of others. Smith’s right to free speech takes nothing away from Jones. The only obligation Jones owes to Smith is not to interfere with Smith’s exercise of her rights.

A right to health care, however, says that Smith has a right to Jones’ labor. That turns the concept of individual rights from a shield into a sword.

I would add one further example, that everyone has a "right" to have access to food, but no one has the right to free food.

Any argument that might justify "free" food or "free" health care--which of course come at taxpayer expense--is a steep slippery slope down the path to total state control and minimal individual freedom.

Please read the whole article; it contains far more points worthy of consideration than I could appropriately copy here.

HT to the National Center for Policy Analysis.