The current Congress and administration’s effort to pass a nationalized healthcare bill is based on the premise that healthcare is a RIGHT that is being denied to nearly one seventh of Americans. Where did this idea come from and why is it so recent of an argument? Liberal moral outrage and accusations of conservative cruelty are used to justify the largest proposed public expense in American history – despite the warning from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that such an action will financially ruin the nation. Emotion is pitted against logic.

How is that healthcare is an ignored right in America? What do we mean when we say that it is a right? There is an assumption that if people have a NEED for medical care that is not met, then our society has an obligation to fulfill that need. But does that need constitute a right? If we are talking about the type of rights guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, those are Liberty Rights – David Kelly has defined liberty rights as those “rights to freedom of action” which have “negative obligations”, that is, “the obligation not to interfere with one’s liberty.” You may do as you like as long as no one is limited from doing as they like and no cost is imposed on anyone else by your action.

The intent of liberty rights is to protect the autonomy of the individual from the coercion of others. This view acknowledges that we own ourselves and our actions. No one else, including government, has a right to our person or the product of our labor. A liberty rights is a natural right, - God-given, which pre-existed man and our cognizance of our rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness incur no other expense or obligation on another and can be seen as possible without any other person’s assistance. But healthcare? - How can anyone imagine one being entitled to healthcare with requiring someone else to provide it? Before humans invented medicine, did the right to an MRI or a tetanus shot exist? This demand was created by man and requires man to fulfill. It is not a right but a legislator’s attempt at an imposition under the name of a right to make the imposition easier to take.

Since healthcare does not exist in nature, how could it be a natural right?

If one is to attempt to legislate the fulfillment of the “right to healthcare” then it will require first, that someone else be forced to provide that healthcare. Put another way, someone else will be forced to surrender their liberty to that of another. And at what cost? We are all, in our guarantee to our pursuit of happiness, allowed to determine our compensation for our work. If we do not like the pay, we can reject or leave the job – under a nationalized healthcare system, where will the healthcare worker who feels under-compensated go? If we force someone to work for others and take the product of their labor at less than fair compensation, have we not reduced that person to a serf – or a slave?  Have we not also reduced the taxpayer to a slave to provide the funding for that healthcare against their will – and is this not merely theft? That is the correct term for taking one’s goods or money by force, in this case governmental force.

“Legitimate rights”, in the words of Leonard Peikoff, “have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people.” The American rights impose no obligation on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. The system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want – not to be given it without effort by somebody else.” To take from another by force, especially legislative force, is at the least immoral, and at the worst criminal.

But let’s concede for the moment that healthcare is a natural right and see where this road goes. We will claim that humans are entitled to healthcare in order to live a better life and to alleviate suffering. So now we have amongst our rights, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and healthcare. We have also been told that financial security in our old age is a right and therefore we have justified the Ponzi scheme of Social Security. But what then of the basics of human material needs: food, clothing and shelter? Does not every person alive need these things? So are they not rights in the same sense as healthcare? Where is our quality of life without those needs?

So we can then justify the need for shelter – at public expense to make sure that everyone has adequate shelter – and fair shelter that is the same for everyone and provided by a nationalized construction industry. But we must eat to remain alive and it is not fair and just to shelter all but let some starve in their warm, new, taxpayer financed homes. Then we legislate that food be provided and we nationalize food production. Lastly, we need clothing to remain warm in the winter so the apparel industry is also nationalized and standardized to control costs and distribution.

We must remember that we have to maximize scarce resources to be fair, so everyone will get the same size and style of house, the same clothing, the same food, the same quality and quantity of healthcare, the same of EVERYTHING. Think Mao suits…

But then we have forgotten a few things… how about transportation? People need to be able to get to work and to the doctor. Now think East German Trabant car. Also, do some people not need access to the internet? Let’s provide that too at taxpayer expense. How about entertainment? What is life without cable TV and the occasional movie? Isn’t a vacation in the Caribbean a right after working hard all year?

Let’s face it: there is no end to what others will call a right when their needs remain unfulfilled and the cost is shifted to someone else. In the end, we will have all these new found rights, but…no choice in what we have, and thus, no liberties.