Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has a petition to establish health care as a right.
The petition does no justice in establishing a valid reason to define health care as a right. Instead, it argues that ‘we’ve been trying to reform health care since 1912, we are already paying for universal health care but don’t have truly universal health care, we have a bill sitting in limbo that will establish health care as a right (H.R. 697), and the U.S. Constitution implies that health care is a right.’
He quotes part of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, which states the following:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The statement “in order to…promote the general welfare” is what he’s leveraging to establish health care as a right. The sticky bit is that the constitution strives to promote the general welfare, not to provide for the general welfare.
Mr. Kucinich’s argument that Article 1, Section 8 supports health care as a civil right is simply incorrect. Article 1, Section 8 states the following:
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
This section is meant to benefit the republic, not its citizens. It clearly states “of the United States” whereas the Preamble used the term “to ourselves.” By arguing that Article 1, Section 8 pertains to the citizenry, he opens up the argument that Congress is authorized to pay citizens’ debts and to defend them, i.e. a federal police force.
The Founding Fathers knew that a federal government had no business in the personal lives of its citizens because it is so far disconnected from them, that it can’t possibly understand all their personal needs and how best to provide for them all. State and local governments are better equipped to provide for the needs of their citizens because they are physically and ideologically closer to the citizens and most importantly, directly elected by the citizens.
Establishing health care as a right is not the right answer to the question of how to reform health care. Health care is a commodity. In order to provide health care, someone has to directly or indirectly give you their time, for which they must be compensated, otherwise it becomes slavery. By establishing health care as a right, you indirectly state that citizens have a right to the time of health care providers, which becomes an extremely slippery slope.
The federal government should be promoting the general welfare of its citizens by encouraging states to continue their social experiments with health care reform. States like California, Illinois, and Massachusetts are all already in the process of such experiments and are leading the way for other states to do the same.
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