Health Care Insurance: Right, Responsibility or Something Else?

At the final pre-election debate this week, Barack Obama proclaimed that health insurance is a right for everyone. That is a 'right' as in 'all men have been endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' as it was put in the Declaration of Independence. Does that make any sense?


First some history. During the wage and price controls of World War 2, employers were unable to attract the limited supply of workers by offering higher wages so they began to offer paid health insurance instead. It was a form of compensation that got around the wage controls. Up until that time, no one would have imagined health insurance as a right. It was a purchase you could make, like life insurance or any number of other purchases. It became a form of compensation during the war.


Health care service from a provider has always been a purchase, something that you pay for. Health insurance is a way of spreading those purchases over time, leveling the cost. So how does it now become a right? What is a right, anyway?




To me, a right is a freedom that we exercise to pursue our needs and interests. Freedoms have to do with opportunity and are different from things we need. Health care is a need. Health insurance is a means of paying for that need. Freedom to own property (like an insurance policy) is a right.




To turn a need like health care into a right is to destroy the meaning of the word 'rights'. We have a number of basic needs, including food, clothing and shelter. We do not and should not expect the government to provide our food, clothing and shelter normally. We do expect our government to protect our right to own food, clothing and shelter. Providing for us is a very different thing than protecting our rights.





So, while health care services are purchases that we often need, health care is not a right. Our former President FDR did not help us any on this point with his famous Four Freedoms speech in which he declared that freedom from want and freedom from fear are equivalent to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, confounding the rights of speech and religion with needs for food, clothing, shelter, and security. The muddled thinking of Obama is following a long tradition in that regard.





So what is an appropriate view of health care for all? If we as a nation choose to provide health care for all citizens it is as a choice for how we want to pay for health care. It is not a right. It may in fact be charity (as in 'agape', which the King James version of the Bible translates 'charity' and newer versions translate 'love') for the poor among us who cannot afford very much health care. We may as Christians want to do this as a matter of charity/love, but it is not a right. As such, it should be vigorously debated and the costs made clear. The attempt to proclaim it a right is an attempt to short-circuit the debate, deny others the right to disagree, and insist that it is beyond debate. And to force it on us is indeed to violate our rights.



Does that mean that our government welfare system is charity? Yes it does. Government provided health care would also be charity. To provide food, clothing, and shelter through taxation and the government for those who try to provide for themselves but cannot is a good thing to do, but it is still a form of charity.