Ron Paul, “Health Care Is Not A Right”

Yahoo Finance reporter Aaron Task interviewed Congressman and Doctor Ron Paul recently, and the statements he made were as straight forward and logical as any I've heard on the health care “debate” going on in Washington.

He said health care is “not a right,” and that the current administration is going through a series of very large spend, spend, spend procedures to “give” individuals everything they need. Obama and his benevolent helpers are paving the road to economic Armageddon with their good intentions. No good deed goes unpunished is a phrase that comes to mind. We should also ask seriously where the money will come from, because the good Congressman is correct.

Health care isn't a right. Nor is an education for the children you did not conceive; nor is a retirement for someone whom you don't know; nor is a home for those who lost their jobs, or spent too much of their income. It all makes us feel better to know that someone, or something, has our backs if we fall down. But allying our feelings through the public redistribution of privately earned wealth simply isn't a “right.” It's not, because no one has the right to another person's money, no matter how much better it makes them feel.

I personally find it ironic to no end that the first black President in The United States is a man who's pushing so hard to create economic slaves. But the irony doesn't end there.

Government is growing by leaps and bounds, while the income of most Americans is plunging – which is exactly why the deficit is soaring. But ultimately the big problem we should all look out for in health care, at least in the near future, is the same problem we've seen the administration choke over in their predictions of what amount of money is sufficient to make up a “stimulus package.” In short, they don't know. As I mentioned in my last post, there's a litany of problems and interpretations that the stimulus package is dragging along with it. The most disheartening of which is that the Obama administration is avoiding accountability by constantly shifting their baseline in order to cover the incorrect estimates they made regarding the state of the economy. It's hard to know what steps to take, if the floor under your feet is constantly moving.

I've listed here some other small details that I think the administration is conveniently overlooking for the sake of expediency and feeling good. When these very real problems come to light, we can expect more shifting baselines, and more calls for expansion of the soon-to-be health care nightmare.

1. The government has underestimated the total number of sick persons in the U.S.

2. They have underestimated the number of individuals who right now do no seek medical attention because of its cost.

3. They have underestimated the initial cost of the program, in the same way that England, France, Canada and many other single-payer countries, now looking to divest themselves of their health care systems, underestimated their initial costs.

4. They are overlooking the obvious fact that many Americans left on the margin will intentionally find ways to reduce their income, if the benefits of publicly subsidized health care outweigh the benefits of keeping the extra income, and the costs of compliance with the punitive new laws.

5. Right now, the medical industry in the U.S. requires one dollar of regulatory cost for every two dollars spent. That's a rate of 50 staggering percent. It's higher than any other industry. With more government intervention, in what's already the most heavily regulated industry in the country, that ratio isn't likely to improve.

What all of this means is that health care will cost the American public far more than the original one trillion dollars estimate. And worse still, once the program is instituted, it will be impossible to extricate. This is horrible news for the people who are already suffering through the worst economic conditions in 70 years.

Eventually, I hope the American people will come to see that we don't suffer from a lack of government meddling. We don't have a lack of medical insurance. What we need is what Mr. Paul stated at the end of his conversation with Aaron Task: “I want everybody to have maximum care at the best price. And that's why I want the government out of it completely.”