At Mark Souder's health care town hall meeting Friday, former City Councilman Dr. John Crawford succinctly identified a major problem with Obamacare and similar proposals:
Government involvement is a huge part of the problem in health care,” Dr. John Crawford, an oncologist and former Fort Wayne city councilman, said. Crawford, strongly opposed to proposed changes in health care, said that costs rose faster as more and more forms of insurance, especially government coverage, accelerated “the separation of the purchaser from the payer.”
Government has been a major factor in exploding health care costs. How can anyone seriously argue that further government involvement will reduce costs? Argue that we need more or better coverage, if you will, or that to deny insurance for people with pre-exiting conditions is immoral, but be honest about the costs involved. If more people are covered, there will be either greater costs or less treatment.
And Fort Wayne attorney David Van Gilder asked a question that gets to the heart of the debate:
Is health care a fundamental right or a privilege?
[. . .]
“I believe access to health care is a basic right,” Souder told him. “Do you have a right to have other people pay for it?” Souder argued that in the spirit of charity, Americans should fund medical care for people who cannot afford it. But that doesn't mean such charity should become a government institution.
Even access to care is only a basic right in the sense that government shouldn't be able to deny it. That makes it a negative right in the way long recognized as the foundation of this country, such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Governments are just only as long as they recognize such basic freedoms. The line Souder is attempting to avoid crossing is the one separating such negative rights from positive rights -- the right to have something provided by government, whether it's food, shelter or health care. Finite goods can be guaranteed to all only if they are redistributed among those who have them and those who do not. That means government does the redistribution, which makes something a privilege that can be granted or denied or changed at will. "Rights" don't change.
