The 'right' to health care does not exist

Here's hoping Team Obama accepts Johnathan Alder's advice to "reframe" the health care debate as "the most important civil-rights bill in a generation." You're damn right it is, Alder.

The main reason that the bill isn't sold as civil rights is that most Americans don't believe there's a "right" to health care. They see their rights as inalienable, and thus free, which health care isn't.

The truly committed progressive left has it in its collective mind that creating the "right" to health care is, or ought to be, not terribly controversial and a moral imperative. In fact it is the opposite. It is immoral. It is also impractical. And with any luck at all it will be the very thing that causes a majority of the American public to never trust a progressive/liberal/leftist near the levers of government, at any level, ever again.

Alder's column carries the obligatory picture of the angry-shouting-white-senior, driven to hysterics by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Like the rest, Alder assumes that if Obama just does a better job at selling, and debunking Rush and Sarah Palin, then Gramps there will just STFU and fall in line. And like the rest, Alder assumed that health care "reform" would be so non-controversial, and Obama so popular, that Obama would never have to talk about real specifics (or long-term consequences) and could just continue to spout double-talk about how this plan would miraculously "save" money. (Here's a thought -- if it has the potential to save so much money, let's just provide health coverage to the entire world and erase our national debt.) The Left's conventional wisdom is that town hall mobs were misinformed by the Evil League of Evil Conservatives and now the answer is for Obama to make a comprehensive case for reform. And let us all hope that Obama takes up the challenge, because that might just be the strategic blunder that saves the country from descending into socialism.

As far as the Left is concerned, the underlying "case" for reform, the logical and moral underpinning for the need for government intrusion, is your "right" to health care. A "right" which doesn't exist. Alder wants to enshrine it in a piece of landmark civil-rights legislation comparable to Social Security or the Voting Rights Acts. Once it's there, the courts will make sure that liberals never have to go through this debate ever again. So if they can just make the "case" for people to sacrifice their real rights -- like self-determination, or private property -- on the altar of Obamacare, they can win.

But in doing so, in making that case for a "right" to health care, the Left will have to forever abandon the guise of "incremental" health care reform. You can't build a logical case for a "right" to health care and not call for single-payer and more. Making this "case" strips away all of the liberal rhetoric and leaves nothing but a naked call for full-on socialism.

If Obama plainly states that reform is imperative because people have a "right" to health care -- an inherent human right, which therefore existed all along and now will be recognized (and enforced) by government -- then by necessity the government would be called upon to barge into the marketplace and assume complete control over it in order to ensure that "right," and everyone else is going to have to pay for it, no matter what the cost in blood and treasure.

Liberals will certainly no longer be able to talk about a "public option" as some sort of benign entity, merely created "to bring market discipline." Just your helpful, friendly little government program. Nothing to worry about. No, if there's "right" to health care, any private participant in the health care marketplace is living on borrowed time. Any private participant is no longer private at all, but merely an extension of the federal government. The "public option" will, by necessity, rule the marketplace. All others will be invited guests.

One more reason why I want Obama to follow Alder's advice -- the conservative side has been fighting this war for generations. We were right then, we're right now, and our side is the side that squares with fundamental American principles of liberty. If this is the battle we have to fight today, our side is ready to plant the flag. We are ready to die on this hill, and always have been. So here's a flashback -- a video of Ronald Reagan spelling out the case against socialized medicine back in 1961. It's been making the rounds on YouTube, but the interesting thing is that this was the guerrilla "social media" of the day -- rather than relying on the media, the American Medical Association pressed LP records and sent them out for people to listen to and pass around. Taking the case over the heads of the chattering class and directly to the American people worked then, too.