Underlying issues in the health-care debate

There are two fundamentally different views on the nature of human rights at the heart of the current health care debate.  The “positive rights” or “natural rights” tradition holds that basic human rights are inherent in our being.  They are seen as gifts from Nature or Nature’s God, and therefore exist prior to government.  Since government does not grant them it does not control, direct or guarantee them.  In this view, people make choices for themselves as they exercise personal liberty to direct their own lives, and create governments as necessary to help referee conflicts which inevitably arise between individuals exercising those rights.
In the “negative rights” tradition, rights are granted by government.  People are only allowed to do what a sovereign government allows permission for them to do.  Because rights are granted by the government, the government also controls their exercise.

Our Founders advocated a positive rights view.  Jefferson enumerated “the pursuit of happiness” not “the guarantee of happiness” among those rights he said were unalienable.  He had good reason for this.  If government is held to be the source or guarantor of happiness it can also take that happiness away.

Advocating for health care guaranteed as a “right”, paid for and delivered by the federal government is advocating at the same time for government to control the exercise of that right, including when and where care will be given.  If the government is paying for care, the government will naturally determine which tests are allowed to diagnose a problem, how many can be given, which procedures are allowed, etc. If you think insurance companies are intrusive and obstructionist, just wait until a federal agency dictates how health care is run.

While inconvenience, longer wait time and rationed care seem to be inevitable outcomes of the federal takeover of health care, the most damning outcome is likely to be surrendering more of our personal liberty – turning more and more control over to a federal master.  Benjamin Franklin said it this way:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Like many other conservatives have said before me, the more fundamental issue here is about much more than health care – it is about the proper role of government.  We want government to do less to us and for us -- and leave us alone to direct our own lives.  They want it to do more, and seem willing to accept the chains that are eventually forged in the process.