Muleskinner

Issue date: 10/16/08 Section: Voices

Media Credit: Drew Woolery: Muleskinner Commentary: Mikey Tyler

During the second debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, moderator Tom Brokaw asked the candidate's whether they considered health care to be a right, privilege or a responsibility.

McCain responded that he considered it a responsibility and gave a politically calculated answer as to why. Then Obama's turn came and he said that he considered it a right.

I don't know why exactly, but for some reason this statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I spent the next couple of days wondering how anyone could consider health care a right.

I first thought of how health care was not a right because it was not specifically enumerated in the constitution. I mentioned this at the post-debate discussion I attended and someone responded that the term "life" in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," guaranteed the right to health care.

I responded with the fact that those who considered health care a right are mostly from a party that doesn't want to guarantee life to babies, but I wasn't satisfied with that answer because it had nothing to do with why I was really against it.

So I kept pondering.

I imagined the founding of our nation, when the greatest thinkers of their time gathered to decide what this new country would be like. I wondered if any of them said, "Hey let's guarantee the right of health care to all of our citizens." I didn't think so, but that response failed to satisfy me either.

Then, several days later I found an article on nationalreview.com by Bill Whittle that made this point, "Food is more important than health care. You die pretty quickly without food. Do we have a "right" to food in America? What about shelter? Do we have a "right" to housing?

And if we do have a right to housing, what standard of housing do we have a right to? And if it is a right, due to all Americans, wouldn't that mean that no one should have to accept any housing, or health care, which is inferior to anyone else's… since it's a right?"

This was the closest I had come to a suitable response, so I kept reading, "Constitutional rights protect us from things: intimidation, illegal search and seizure, self-incrimination and so on. The revolutionary idea of our Founding Fathers was that people had a God-given right to live as they saw fit. Our constitutional rights protect us from the power of government."

This was only half of his argument however, "But these new so-called "rights" are about the government - who the Founders saw as the enemy - giving us things: food, health care, education... And when we have a right to be given stuff that previously we had to work for, then there is no reason - none - to go and work for them. The goody bag has no bottom, except bankruptcy and ruin."

I laughed, I cried, I was overcome with joy. I had finally found a way to express what I was thinking.

Health care is not a right because it does not make a person more free. Rights are to give people freedom, but nationalized health care will need to raise taxes to support the costs, and in doing so it will restrict people's freedom.

If you are not allowed to spend the money you worked hard to earn on what you wish, then are you really free?

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