Health Care, a “Right”?

This is an old Zoltar Speaks! blog post.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about this growing argument that healthcare is a “right” and I’ve finally collated my thoughts in one place.  Here we go…

Let’s start with a few reasonably simple definitions.

Right: A moral or legal entitlement to something.

Human Right: An entitlement that “belongs” to every human being.

Civil Right: The entitlement of a citizen to based on law.

Health: A person’s mental or physical condition.

Healthy: In good health.

Care: (as related to health) the services rendered by members of the health professions.

Service: The action of helping or doing work for someone

Now let talk about some reasonable knowns.
1. The human body is the “biological vehicle” that carries our essence through life.

2. Healthcare is a service providing maintenance and repair to biological vehicles.

3. The level of maintenance needed to maintain any individual biological vehicle is determined by genetics and the amount of use or abuse that the specific biological vehicle has endured.

4. Physicians are professionally trained and licensed service personnel specializing in maintenance and repairs of biological vehicles; (UPDATED THE FOLLOWING) the purpose for their service is to relieve pain and suffering, restore functioning, or prolong life.

5. No one has the “right” to be healthy, not you, not me, no one!

6. Cost associated with maintaining an individuals’ personal biological vehicle is the responsibility of the individual or the legal guardian of that individual.

7. You do not have the legal right to a service that you cannot pay for, how much and how you choose to pay for services performed is up to you and the provider of the service.

Now the big question; are health care services a right or not?

In my opinion health care services are not a human right (hate me if you must) and they are not currently a Constitutional right.  Since health care services are a service, I don’t think they should be a right.  Making a service a right would open up a whole new Can-O-Worms.

For the sake of argument let’s look at what would change if we actually had an Amendment to the Constitution making health care services a right, how about something simple like…

“A healthy citizen population is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to health care services shall not be infringed.”

Think about it, does that change anything?

Having the “right” to health care services doesn’t define who pays for the health care services performed, just like having the right to keep and bear arms doesn’t define who pays for the arms you have the right to bear. Having the “right” to health care services doesn’t define the level of services or if those health care services are competent, just like the 2nd Amendment doesn’t define the type or quality of the arms you have the right to bear. Having the “right” to health care services doesn’t define that the medical provider must be the state, just like having the right to bear arms doesn’t define that the state be the provider of the arms you have the right to bear. Like the 2nd amendment, an amendment about health care would say the right of the people to have access to health care services shall not be infringed, or something along those lines. Having the “right” to health care services doesn’t mean a thing if there are no doctors providing the services to the people, just like having the right to bear arms means nothing if manufacturers of arms and ammunition cannot provide their products to the people.

In my opinion, making health care services a right changes nothing and it’s wrong; the right itself wouldn’t make health care more accessible to anyone regardless of social status or wealth.  In my opinion, access to emergency health care services is available right now as a de facto right; anyone can call 911 and get emergency medical treatment from professionally trained medical staff including emergency room services.  (ADDED THE FOLLOWING IN AN UPDATE) There is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) which makes it a legal obligation to provide services to everyone coming into an emergency department requesting examination or treatment for a medical condition regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay; this is an unfunded mandate passed by Congress in 1986 that essentially makes emergency health care a de facto Civil Right (as defined above) and dumps 100% of the cost of that unfunded mandate on the medical facility performing the emergency service, which in-turn increases the overall cost to everyone using the facilities that are required to perform these unfunded services.

Special Note: Thank you goes out to John Billingsley for additional information that I used to update this blog.