There Is No Right to Healthcare

Letter sent to Senators and Representative July 2009

You are on a desert island.

There are three other people with you… a mother, her teenage daughter, and an unrelated teenage girl. You have the only gun. The mother has the only aspirin… a single pill.

You are out of earshot from the others and busy gathering wood to make a fire. The unrelated girl pleads with the mother, “Wow! I have a wicked headache. I need the aspirin. Please give it to me?”

“No”, the mother says somewhat regretfully, “I am saving the aspirin for my daughter or myself in case one of us becomes ill.”

The unrelated girl walks over to you, gets your attention, and petitions, “Make that woman give me her aspirin. I have a killer headache and I need it.”

**********************************************

Healthcare is provided to you by other people. It is not your right to make them give it to you. To do so, would violate the other people’s unalienable rights. It matters not if the “making” is direct or indirect (through a third party). Healthcare providers can attend to others voluntarily for free or in fair exchange of value, or they can attend to others under threat of, or actual, force. The latter option is not worthy of a civil society. Further, how good will healthcare be that is provided under threat of or actual force?

By the way, in the short analogy, if you are the government and running healthcare programs, you use the threat of your gun to take the aspirin from the mother to meet the current “needs” of the girl, you put 60% of the pill in your pocket, you wait a day or two (after all, you are busy with important stuff), and then you give the girl the remaining 40% while telling her, “Look what a great job I do for you.” After a month or so, because the mother has forgotten you’re the one with the gun, you look her in the eye and say, “Hey, if you ever need aspirin, I’ve got you covered. Look what a great job I do for you.”