Is health care a basic human right?
Posted in Liberty's Lessons by R Lee Wrights on February 9th, 2010 by Tessa Rose
A response to the Facebook poll: Should health care be considered a basic human right?
If health care is a basic human right, then why are so many people speaking in such nationalistic terms–complaining, for instance, about illegal aliens, as if only Americans are human beings? Citizens of Mexico are humans, too. So are citizens of Nigeria, and China. If health care is a basic human right, then it is a basic right of every human being in the world.
Much of the conflict in the current health care debate comes from confusion about the concept of “rights.” Many Americans cling to an old-fashioned definition of “rights” which denies the validity of positive rights like the right to adequate health care. So allow me to take a moment to clarify the difference between positive and negative human rights.
Health care is a positive right, which means it is a right to certain goods and services produced by others. The right to health care creates a corresponding obligation for others to produce and provide those goods and services. In contrast, a negative right, like the right to life, requires only that others refrain from killing you. Thus, negative rights require nothing more than acknowledgment and self-control from others, while positive rights require production and provision of goods and services. Of course this does not mean that positive rights do not exist–only that they require much more effort to “defend.”
Another difference between positive and negative rights is that negative rights place a negative obligation on all other humans equally; your right to life requires all other humans to refrain from killing you. But a positive right entails the obligation to provide goods and services; it cannot be required of those who cannot produce and provide those goods and services, but only of the relatively small segment of humanity that has the ability to produce them. The obligations of this particular group (in this case, doctors, nurses, drug companies, etc.) can be somewhat mitigated by taxing everyone who receives income to pay those who must actually do the work. This spreads the obligation more evenly over the human population.
I think it’s obvious that the defense of humanity’s right to health care requires the establishment of a world organization devoted to assessing the needs of all countries and ensuring that those needs are met, with as much fairness as is humanly possible. This organization must be granted power, first of all, to tax the entire working/investing population of the world (though perhaps individual governments could tax their own citizens and hand it over all at once). Funding would probably be best accomplished by steeply progressive taxes on income and wealth. Secondly, the organization must have the power to deploy doctors, nurses, and medical resources where they are needed most. At first, this system would undoubtedly entail a massive influx of money and personnel from the richer to the poorer countries of the world, but only until such time as health care resources are deemed by the central medical authority to be distributed evenly over the world.
It is to be hoped that American medical personnel would voluntarily and happily embrace their placements in foreign countries for the good of humanity. However, the central medical authority must have the ability to enforce the fair distribution of medical services if necessary. Possibly large fines could be levied on anyone who refuses deployment, and this money could be used to pay others who are willing. Possibly doctors and nurses could be barred from practicing their chosen profession if they refuse to accept their assignments.
We would hope that stronger measures, such as imprisonment, would not be necessary to enforce compliance from doctors and nurses. However, imprisonment has always been required to enforce the payment of taxes, and this is not likely to change. In the United States and other developed nations where the first phase of universal health care will undoubtedly entail higher taxes coupled with a lower level of health care services, strong measures may be required to enforce compliance with the new health care tax for certain segments of the population.
While sensible, progressive thinkers will undoubtedly embrace the plan and pay the new taxes voluntarily, the United States is unfortunately home to a great number of potential domestic terrorists who care for no one but themselves, and regard all socially progressive programs with extreme paranoia. Their propaganda attempts to discredit the very concept of the positive rights essential to a socially advanced society. Sadly, we are likely to experience a vicious backlash against the health care system from this backward group, and additional taxes may be needed to pay for the incarceration of any who refuse to comply with the new laws.
Tessa Rose is the wife of tax heretic/anarchist writer Larken Rose, with whom many of you are familiar. Find out more about Tessa at http://tessa-rose.blogspot.com/.
DENIS FOLEY said,
February 10, 2010 @ 7:20 am
I love “dry” humor and for a paragraph or two you really had me going. Johnathan Swift would approve.
Remember Taxation isn’t just Theft, it’s also SLAVERY!
Benjamin Virnston said,
February 10, 2010 @ 10:13 am
Wonderfully written satire. This is a great way of showing those in favor of such policies how ridiculous they sound.
MamaLiberty said,
February 10, 2010 @ 4:42 pm
WHEW!! I had to check the title of the website at least once after reading the second paragraph…
Satire is dangerous for us old ladies…
Kitty Antonik Wakfer said,
February 11, 2010 @ 11:40 pm
Tessa, I commend your attempt to correct the thinking of those who think in terms of “rights”, especially in the “positive” sense, by taking the progression of government actions in regards to health care “rights” to some of the logical conclusions. And these almost certain inevitabilities truly are ludicrous when considered in their full context.
If you have not already published at OpEdNews.com, I suggest that you do so since it is there that you will be more likely to reach those not already convinced of your arguments. While that site is stated to be “progressive” (whatever that means these days…), the publisher, Rob Kall will publish anything well written, even if it opposes his own views. I have had several articles published there in the past - most not in agreement with Rob, who seeks more government involvement in many choices of the individual - for the very purpose of not simply “preaching to the choir”, and I may do so again in the future.
But the concept of “rights” needs to be addressed as a whole. I am convinced - having become so, from my own previous strong discomfort with “rights”, while assisting husband Paul Wakfer in writing his treatise, “Social Meta-Needs: A New Basis for Optimal Interaction”, beginning in 2003 (less than 4 years after we met) - that this concept contains more problems than can be solved by simply trying to firmly establish a difference between “negative” and “positive” versions. From the abstract of this essay:
“It is argued that the concept of ‘rights’ is neither a complete nor a consistent basis for human Liberty, and that ‘rights’ should be replaced by Stipulations concerning Entitlements and Responsibilities within a new conception of a Social Contract in order to facilitate the achievement of the Social Meta-Needs - the Members of the Society being those who Execute the Contract together with all their Property.”
Even though some rights-related ideas have clearly served a valuable purpose in the history of human Liberty, there exists no well-defined (logically valid) concept attached to the term “rights”, and thus, the use of that term is inevitably destructive to rational thought concerning the nature of human Social InterAction, the production of human Happiness and the resolution of human conflicts (Violations and/or InterActions with Harmful Effects). Paul has supplied sound reasons for this conclusion, the first three of which briefly are:
1. The notion of “rights” reverses cause and effect. Since a person has little true understanding and even less direct Control over the behavior of others, for a person to maximize hir (his/her) potential for Lifetime Happiness in a Social context, it is the Personal Social Characteristics of hir own behavior towards others that will best ensure that they (the others) aid hir in this accomplishment. Therefore the first priority is to determine what are those Personal Social Characteristics that will result in this cooperation, and then to Decide and Act in accordance with them - *not* [to determine] what is the behavior of others towards hir.
2. There appears to be no concept related to “rights” and concerning human actions in the absence of other humans, which might then become “rights” as a special case within a Social context. This fact alone should make one suspicious that “rights” even exist as any Type of human Attribute, let alone that they are natural and even inalienable.
3. Major logical problems arise, when violations occur, because of the attribution of inalienable or inherent character to some “rights”. This is because, if “rights” are fundamental Attributes of human nature, without which, therefore, no life-form can be said to be human, then how is it logically possible for a violator to no longer have some of them?
For the full discussion of “Rights” in this essay see: http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html#ref32 but starting from the beginning is strongly recommended.
The capitalized words above are technical terms, with links within the Social Meta-Needs essay to their specific meanings. Paul describes in the Preface that during the discovery, development and explication of this basis for a truly free and optimal society it “became clear that certain concepts, essential to their completion, are not present in the vernacular language. It was therefore necessary to clarify and specify many word definitions, and even to create a few, happily using some current vernacular words with multiple meanings, some of which were closely related to what was needed. The result of this is that many words and phrases used in this treatise are effectively the technical terms of the presented theory. ”
I agree with Paul completely that those promoting and seeking liberty must agree on clearly defined complete and unambiguous terms in discussion among themselves and with others. If not, they are talking past each other - for those who actually enter into dialog rather than simply writing from “on high”. The results of such non-communication (talking past or not at all) are that a truly free society will never be more than a vaporous cloud, with different and even opposing characteristics depending on who has caught a glimpse of its possibility - forever elusive in reality - rather than the very real society that can be had if approached from the basis of Social Meta-Needs.