Howard: On health care, Democrats pursue socialist redefinition of rights

Ending the Democrats’ legislative dominance last month, Massachusetts voters elected… Ending the Democrats’ legislative dominance last month, Massachusetts voters elected Scott Brown, the 41st Republican senator of the 111th Congress, and they simultaneously killed Democratic hopes for statist health care reform.

But like Lazarus from the grave, Democratic health care reform reappeared Monday as a new proposal, drafted by the White House, that combines elements of both the Senate and House bills. Although repackaged, the White House’s proposal is simply a patchwork imitation of the bills that were consistently rejected by the American people in elections and polls around the country.

Indeed, the latest data from Newsweek shows that, as of Feb. 18, only 40 percent of registered voters support Barack Obama’s health care reform plan, whereas 49 percent oppose it. Furthermore, an aggregation of polling data from Jan. 20 through Feb. 18 compiled by RealClearPolitics.com — a non-partisan, for-profit polling aggregator — shows that, on average, Americans oppose the President’s plan by a margin of 14.3 percent.

Clearly, the Democrats’ dogged pursuit of health care reform is not about representing the will of the American people but rather pursuing a radically divergent conception of rights and imposing this conception on our nation.

The proof is in how Leftists — both nationally and on our campus — dogmatically describe health care as a human right. Traditionally, American rights are individual rights to action or freedom from government intrusion: the First Amendment’s right to free speech, the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy, etc.

However, while America’s founding rights guarantee individuals the freedom to say and do things free from onerous government intervention, the vision of rights enshrined in Democratic health care reform is a socialist construct that elevates the government above the individual and places it in charge of private industry.

For instance, in a major expansion of government power over the individual, the president’s proposal mandates that individuals purchase health insurance or pay a significant fine. In a similar expansion of government authority over private corporations, Obama proposed that the secretary of health and human services be given new authority to either approve or void insurance premium increases.

The president’s proposal to expand government power is crafted in a way to make opposition difficult. After all, it is almost impossible to defend before the American people the ability of insurance companies to raise premiums by 39 percent.

Obama’s attempt to pass health care reform on the crest of a tidal wave of populist regulation demonstrates the inability of Democrats to pass this reform through an honest debate based on its merits rather than on the perceived evils of one insurance company. Remember, as the market stands today, consumers unhappy with a premium increase can at least drop their insurance and purchase a new one or not purchase one at all, whereas Obama’s proposal would create a less flexible market.

While these instances of expanded regulations and individual mandates do demonstrate the Democrats’ socialist conception of rights, by far its most threatening conclusion is that health care is a right.

Unlike the First, Second or Fourth Amendments mentioned above, the right to health care is an imposition on other Americans because the health care has to come from somewhere. It is an assertion that Americans have the right to another individual’s labor — in this case the labor of doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, etc. — regardless of whether or not they can pay for that service.

In this way, what is construed as one person’s right is in actuality another individual’s burden and not necessarily just the burden of Americans in the health care industry but the burden of every taxpayer.

Indeed, as we debate this shift in rights in this country from the rights of the individual to act to the rights of the many to receive, we would do well to consider the nation’s founding and the opinions of its founders. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, described a good government as one “which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” The fact that Obama’s proposal and the reorientation of rights at its foundation violates both of Jefferson’s requirements for good government should give us pause as we travel down this road to serfdom.

Continue the conversation at Giles’s blog, http://www.gilesbhoward.com/blog/, or e-mail Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu.