Thursday, May 27, 2004
A right to health care?
[John Hood, "You Can’t Create A Fundamental Right," Daily Journal, 25 May 2004.]
The language of rights has become muddled in recent years. The rights to life, liberty and property are now being placed on a par with rights to housing, education, food, safety and health care. John Locke Foundation President John Hood explains that the trend is not likely to improve our lots in life:
A "right to health care" is really an intrusive claim on others, a right to coerce others at the point of a gun to finance one's medical care. It's not like the freedom to speak, the freedom to worship, the freedom to work and keep the fruits of one's labors (a fundamental right recognized in North Carolina's state constitution). These rights constrain government's power to coerce, to deprive individuals of their freedom and dignity. A "right to health care," no matter how benign it may sound, does something like the opposite.
Naturally, and I mean that in both sense of the term, I believe that human beings have a wide variety of moral claims on each other. Helping those in need is one widely recognized by most religions and philosophies of life. What matters for the purposes of constitutional government is which of these claims can justly be enforced by violence or the threat of violence. Constitutions don't create fundamental rights; they recognize preexisting natural rights inherent in the social contract that creates a government, that grants some a monopoly on the first use of physical force to accomplish truly public ends.
Hamilton argued that enumerating rights was dangerous. He didn't know the half of it. Enumerating something like a "right to health care" wouldn't just serve to diminish freedom and expand governmental power by implication. It would do so directly.
[See Charles W. Van Way, III, M.D., "The Strength of a Really Bad Idea," The Flint Hills Center.]
[John Hood, "You Can’t Create A Fundamental Right," Daily Journal, 25 May 2004.]
The language of rights has become muddled in recent years. The rights to life, liberty and property are now being placed on a par with rights to housing, education, food, safety and health care. John Locke Foundation President John Hood explains that the trend is not likely to improve our lots in life:
A "right to health care" is really an intrusive claim on others, a right to coerce others at the point of a gun to finance one's medical care. It's not like the freedom to speak, the freedom to worship, the freedom to work and keep the fruits of one's labors (a fundamental right recognized in North Carolina's state constitution). These rights constrain government's power to coerce, to deprive individuals of their freedom and dignity. A "right to health care," no matter how benign it may sound, does something like the opposite.
Naturally, and I mean that in both sense of the term, I believe that human beings have a wide variety of moral claims on each other. Helping those in need is one widely recognized by most religions and philosophies of life. What matters for the purposes of constitutional government is which of these claims can justly be enforced by violence or the threat of violence. Constitutions don't create fundamental rights; they recognize preexisting natural rights inherent in the social contract that creates a government, that grants some a monopoly on the first use of physical force to accomplish truly public ends.
Hamilton argued that enumerating rights was dangerous. He didn't know the half of it. Enumerating something like a "right to health care" wouldn't just serve to diminish freedom and expand governmental power by implication. It would do so directly.
[See Charles W. Van Way, III, M.D., "The Strength of a Really Bad Idea," The Flint Hills Center.]
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