A Bit on Healthcare – Watch These:

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

This response video shatters the illusion that the first has been carefully thought out. In other words, once we have the specific impacts of government healthcare, it does not sound like an idea that will benefit us as much as certain alternatives. Jumping into a conclusion because it seems like a moral imperative is probably not the best way to ensure that you are making the right decision. Satire and moral outrage do not make good facts or socioeconomic policy, and what we want to have is not always best for us to have…

[One more thing that the video’s author merely touched on: It is ironic to have actors, who make large amounts of money for what they do, arguing that anyone makes too much money, especially considering the public economic value of their occupations. If demand for their occupation was regulated by a government agency, these people can rest assured that they would probably be making what is comparable to minimum wage. And yet the government should control other people’s wages…? Funny how people are always volunteering others’ money, while refusing to spend their own…]

The morality of our government lies in first and foremost protecting its citizens. But there is a cost for such protections that needs to be balanced with those protections in order to have an effective society. There was a lightweight but extremely effective body armor developed a few years ago for soldiers that cost approximately $300,000 per suit. This suit would have made our soldiers impervious to nearly all bullets, shrapnel, and even certain grenade damage, with a projected death rate of 1/500th to 1/1000th of the rate with the armor of today’s US soldiers. Of course, the government scrapped the program. Why? Because the cost per citizen to finance such a program would bankrupt this country. The value of human life on terms of economic impact (in this case, simple monetary value) was not worth implementing this program. There are programs that demand our financial attention other than just this single, high-cost, life-saving one in the military. This is similar to the healthcare debate. The pro-government-healthcare side of the aisle seems to be arguing that healthcare should be universalized no matter the cost – which can be inferred by the fact that cost is rarely discussed by the proponents. The program should be implemented no matter what, because it is a ‘right’ in such a wealthy country to be able to provide for one’s citizenry. It is argued by these people that it is morally wrong not to help the poor get the aid they deserve as human beings. The anti-government-healthcare arguers say that the cost is simply not worth the benefit. By cost, I do not simply mean what the government is willing to use our taxes toward or the total monetary value. I mean the cost to everyone who chooses to stick with their other insurance instead of the government plan, who will still be required to pay taxes that pay for other peoples’ plans. I mean the cost of healthcare procedures going up because the competition will be lowered. I mean the cost in life that will result from bureaucrats having to postpone some procedures in order to complete others first. I mean the cost in waiting time that a flood of people seeking checkups or procedures that will inevitably result. I mean the cost to doctors and nurses and hospitals of a program like this. I mean the cost to the economy of government expansion over yet another American industry. Most of all, I mean the cost in freedoms that we will sacrifice in the name of rights. Cheaper costs to the few people who do not have healthcare coverage are not the simple extent of ‘costs,’ even though that is where the rhetoric of the left stops. What costs are lowered in one place will be made up elsewhere. This is essential to the discussion at hand, though often overlooked.

But the argument is not about morality. It isn’t morally ok for people to die in car wrecks because their cars don’t have airbags. It isn’t morally ok for soldiers to die because they do not have special suits that cost $300,000. In general, certain wrongs of this world are immoral not to stop. But at what point does the cost to right those wrongs become immoral? What is the cost of a human life in exchange for safety in cars? Is $100,000 per life too much to spend on ensuring cars are safe? 1 million? 1 trillion? The truth is, resources are scarce, and only certain amounts of good can be allotted to right moral wrongs. Of course it is not morally right for some people to be left out in the cold on healthcare. Yet this isn’t the discussion, because there are always moral injustices that cannot be righted without severe detriments to more people. The discussion is two points: a.) What is the cost of universalized healthcare? -and- b.) Is the cost worth the benefit?

Is it truly a ‘right’ to have healthcare? Here, we need to distinguish the difference between positive and negative rights. Negative rights are those things that you inherently possess that must be taken away to be infringed. For example, the right to say what you are thinking. One can infringe on that right by saying you cannot say certain things like yelling ‘fire!’ in a crowded room, for the reason that it can cause panic and hurt people. Negative rights are those that libertarians mostly view as being the only rights you inherently possess in a fundamental sense. Positive rights are those that are given to you by the government, which once given, cannot be taken away without an infringement. For example, your right to an education is a positive right. This right is not inherent, but is given to you by the government in the form of public schools. The depth of these rights has long been the discussion between republicans and democrats. All republicans and democrats (by definition) believe some positive rights are essential and fundamental rights. The question is how far these rights extend. Some believe that the positive right of having a job is fundamental, while others do not. The assertion today by mainly democrats is that healthcare is a fundamental right that we should all possess in this country. The justification for this is that it falls under the purview of ‘providing for the general welfare,’ one of Congress’ duties under the Constitution. The problem is, this is not why the welfare clause was put in the Constitution. In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” The expansion of government under false Constitutional pretenses justified by the welfare clause is astounding. This healthcare bill is no different. A few more quotes from the Founding Fathers on this topic follow…

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
– James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.”
– James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
“With respect to the two words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the “Articles of Confederation,” and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.”

-and-

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817

Even as I write this, I know it is defeated by judicial history. Both republicans and democrats have ushered in programs since New Deal legislation in 1937 that have infringed our rights fundamentally, with little protection from the Supreme Court. In adding programs to ensure equality of results, rights have been lost. There is no reversing that, since the mentality of both parties has now become ‘government expansion at all costs!’ Proclaiming the unconstitutionality of government programs like universal healthcare is a losing game, since government expansion beyond the Constitution has persisted since 1937.

“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
– John Adams

One last thing of note… If Obama wished to provide healthcare for the 12% of this country who do not have cheap enough access to it, he could have simply ‘bailed out’ the people and given them the money to do so until they got on their feet. He had no problems convincing Congress to do it for AIG and several car companies. The implementation of the government plan is not about helping the people. It is about furtherance of government control of a certain means of production. It is about control. It isn’t just democrats. Just wait and see…

[As a side note, the reductio ad absurdum employed by the first video and others like John Stewart blinds many people to the real issues at hand. This logical fallacy is one that holds sway over a majority of my generation, who get their news solely from John Stewart. Why are most of my peers democrats? Because it sounds good, seems cool, and feels natural. But that doesn’t mean it is right…]