Posted by Jonathan Kovaciny on 10/10/09 11:44 PM Last updated 10/08/09 12:04 PM [Newer: The Story of Spending] [Older: Update: 'Health care unequivocally not a right']

My comments on another forum on health care and the role government takes in protecting consumers. The text written by the other person I am indenting in the quote boxes.

You bet healthcare is a HUMAN right. I feel sorry for those who put enterprise /money before mankind. And in terms of the Declaration of Independence... Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness... hard to acheive when being exploited by insurance companies... or lack of funds prevent medical treatment...

Do we agree that a right is something to which one is entitled, something which is inherently possessed? You have a natural right to your own life (no one can legitimately kill you), your liberty (no one can enslave you), and your property (no one can steal what you have labored to produce or purchase). If we agree on this, then health care cannot be a right, because health care must be produced by someone.

If a doctor removes a tumor from your lung, his time and talents must be employed to perform the operation. If the patient has a right to that operation, then it is in violation of the doctor's right to liberty and property (his time and talents) and (s)he is essentially a slave to the patient. Health care is not a right. It is a need. How we as a society provide for that need is the question at hand.

"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. " - what happened there?

There is a difference between saying, 'we're all in the same boat so we all need to row together if we are to achieve independence from the Crown' and saying 'you are all entitled to the product of everyone else's labor, so start sharing'. Also, rights cannot be granted by any document; they are inherent: the fact that the Constitution and other founding documents refer to our natural rights does not mean that the Constitution, etc., are the granters of those rights.

If you so dearly heed the words of the Declaration of Independence, why not then stand with us in defiance of health insurance companies' tyranny over us! Was it not tyranny that inspired the D of I? Do you not see insurance and big pharma price gouging and claim denying and the majority of bankruptcies related to huge medical bills as tyranny? Or is it the corporations inalienable right to drain the good people of this country with high premiums and prices and low payout? What about the confirmed price gouging and rebranding the same drugs to prolong their marketability? How about denying domestic abuse victims for PRE EXISTING conditions? Health insurance ONLY cares about obscene profits - not you, not me, not your family, not mine, not anyone that costs them money! WAKE UP!

People on both sides of any divisive issue are always encouraging the other side to 'wake up', both believing that they themselves are fully 'awake'. Trust me, it's not like I haven't fully considered this issue. Either one of us is wrong or we both are, and its our job to civilly talk about the issue until we can come to an agreement. That's difficult since there's a lot of money being dumped in by those with a vested interest in the outcome, and that tends to muddy the waters of civil discourse. Facts are difficult to come by, sources are biased, and statistics are skewed. On all sides.

Health care in the U.S. is expensive because of massive government intervention - the regulations, mandates, etc., that have turned our health insurance industry into a byzantine third-party payment system rife with waste and lobbyists. The big players in the field have quashed competition by pushing through thousands of regulations designed to make it difficult and expensive for new health care providers and insurers to enter the field.

Health insurance is not insurance at all. If car insurance were run the same way as health insurance, we'd be crying for national car insurance reform right now, too. You'd need a full time job to get car insurance, and the govt would require all insurance plans to cover gasoline, oil changes, and repairs. All mechanics would have to be certified by a state board and attend 4 years of school before they could turn a screwdriver. You'd have no idea how much an oil change cost, but it wouldn't matter because someone else would be paying for it. Etc.

I challenge you to put yourself in someone else's shoes and imagine what someone without the good fortune you have might have to go through to get treatment. Perhaps you can ponder having to sell your home because you can't afford it with all your medical bills. Got a comfy car? Good because you may have to live in it. And I hope you never have a catastrophic medical crisis that may threaten your good fortune as it has for more than half of our countrymen that file bankruptcy every year.

This is a common accusation of those who want to force taxpayers to pay for other people's health care, food, housing, etc. If I oppose forcible taxation for the provision of services to the poor, then that makes me selfish and lacking compassion. To the contrary, I certainly am thinking of people less fortunate than me. My desire is definitely not to trample on the downtrodden, but to help them in a way that actually helps rather than to provide for their needs in a way that makes them dependent (and slaves to the state) and destroys real charitable giving. Believe me, I care for the poor just as much as you do.

The poor (and I myself probably qualify as 'poor') should seek support from their family, friends, churches, neighbors, charities, etc. When the government provides charity or a 'safety net' for people, it completely erodes these important community connections and depersonalizes the act of asking for support and the act of giving support. This depersonalization also makes it easy to ask for help when one doesn't genuinely need it, which leads to abuse and overuse.

Additionally, the government has no real incentive to get people off the dole and back on their own, while a personal donor does. The 'War on Poverty' has been running for decades, and we still have just as many poor people even though we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars. All of the tax money needed to pay for that has a tendency to drive more people toward government support, since they have less money of their own to begin with.

I find it ironic that in the name of freedom, some defend the freedom of corporations to oppress this country. UGH! Capitalism has become an ugly beast when we are so blind as to turn our backs on humanity.

We in the United States have corporatism, not capitalism. Over the years, companies have secured special privileges for themselves from government. The very concept of incorporation violates the rights of the consumers, because the people behind the corporations obtain, through government mandate, special protections from any damages that may result from their corporation's activities. This makes it much easier for companies to screw people over because the company, rather than the people that own it, bears most of the risk.

I absolutely oppose corporatism because it is NOT freedom. We do NOT have a free market or capitalism in the United States (nor really anywhere in the world). Capitalism is the scapegoat because we have what on the surface looks like capitalism but is actually a very mixed economy.

Companies only get as big and powerful as they are because government itself allows them to be. Without the protection of the government and the regulations that stifle true competition, these companies would be quickly replaced by other companies that provided what consumers actually wanted at a lower price and without screwing people over. Ask yourself: "If all health insurance companies are evil and constantly screwing the little guy and putting profit ahead of people, then why don't I get together with some friends and start my own insurance company that is actually nice to our customers and provides a good product at a fair price? People will come in droves to buy insurance from us and we'll rule the insurance market easily."

The answer to this hypothetical question is that you can't. Because the existing insurance companies have so heavily protected themselves with government that you cannot be nice to your customers and stay afloat. If we want to solve this problem, we need LESS government, not more. Government is and will always be the tool of Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big Everything. Government is NOT ON OUR SIDE because we only have votes and the Big Guys have the money. When you vote to put the government in charge of protecting us from the companies (through regulations, mandates, etc.), the companies themselves will, in short order, buy off the politicians and regulators and stack the deck in their favor. The companies can screw us over and be protected from retaliation by the system we voted into place.

I am tired of getting screwed over; we all are. We need to (gently and quickly) dismantle the system that is allowing this to take place.

Posted 10/11/09 01:00 AM Durden Orlando, FL

Very well done, bravo to you sir. Going to post this on my Facebook.

Posted 10/11/09 01:14 AM ksa4liberty Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

I really admire your ability to cut right to the point with surgical precision and clarity. Your posts should be as widely disseminated as possible...they are excellent. Have you thought of/do you do public speaking as well?

Posted 10/11/09 02:15 AM Hudsoner Cold Spring, NY

I second what the others have said. This is probably the most articulate and clearly presented case for free market healthcare I've read yet. Looking forward to your next posts!

Posted 10/11/09 09:26 AM amyers68 JAMESTOWN, OH

Awsome! Fantastic job!!

Posted 10/11/09 09:49 AM rightsman Las Vegas,, NV

Jonathan Kovaciny, Your protagonist states that health care is a human right. And I would agree with him 100%. The responsibility lies with the person with the right. We, each of us, have the right to life. The responsibility lies with the owner of that life to care for it, protect it, and ensure that no one takes that life. Every right comes with a responsibility. The responsibility to protect that right. The government(s) with their mandates and regulations have forced the general populace to abandon the responsibility and look to someone else for the right to health care. We have the right to own a car, but we have the responsibility to pay for it. We have the right to shelter but we have the responsibility to pay for it. A very good article. Thank you, Robert Walker

Posted 10/11/09 10:17 AM CTLovesNathanHale Atlanta, GA

Anyone who thinks they have a right to "free" health care is a slave, a very dangerous individual indeed, and a lost soul. These creatures feel like they are prize animals on a plantation, and therefore their masters should keep their bodies well looked after. In the modern era, no longer are people enslaved in most states by force. They have voluntarily entered the ranks of slavery, like an unwritten contract of indentured servitude. The deal is that the slaves receive certain freebies from their masters, i.e. the "elites" controlling the government, in return for the slave's blind trust and willingness to support the endeavors of said masters, including attacking free members of their own society, and waging war against other peoples. (Of course, the freebies aren't produced by the "elites", just stolen from the rest of us.) The willing slave, what I call the "happy slave", is just as culpable as the "elites" it serves in crimes against humanity.

Posted 10/11/09 11:20 AM jazzycat Galena, MO

This is an excellent article. One of the best I've read in a while. Very concise and understandable. Thank you

Posted 10/11/09 1:15 PM ifc69 Midland, MI

When people go on about the massive profits insurance companies are making, I wonder if they've ever questioned why there aren't more start up companies being created to compete for a piece of the action. I recently filled out the paperwork for my own LLC and even that was almost enough to make me not want to bother. I imagine if more people tried starting their own companies they would soon see where the problem in health care lies.

Posted 10/11/09 4:18 PM retornado30 Roosevelt, UT

Very nice response. I had to laugh when I read your antagonist say that the "pursuit of happiness" is hard to achieve when, "lack of funds prevent medical treatment.." Where does he think "funds" come from? Following his logic you would have to assume that the government is then the dispenser of "funds". And that economy is a government created phenomenon, instead of naturally occurring communication and exchange between individuals. That just sounds plain crazy doesn't it?

Posted 10/11/09 8:46 PM Sarah Denhof Grand Rapids, MI

This is a really nice article. I appreciate how you highlighted the connection between big govt and big pharma, big banking, big agro, big food etc. That's a good rally poster. Of course, govt also reinforces the need for health care by subsidizing these industries. The burden on the health care system would not be nearly so great if it were focused on prevention and healthy lifestyles rather than fast and processed foods, drugs, vaccines, radiation and surgery, oppressing small farmers and suppressing natural healing remedies. This is where health care truly needs to be reformed, not simply insurance. Doctors are the third leading cause of death - and now I have to pay $1,000 NOT to see one? This health care reform is about control, of course it's not their only grab for our bodies, but it is a powerful one. We must continue to resist.

Posted 10/11/09 10:14 PM Cliff Hutchison Portland, OR

Your points are very well made and clear. Did you make any headway with anyone who read this series of posts? I seriously doubt it. Because of the mental conditioning of most people, especially those who are making such arguments, disagreement at the outset of discussion almost ensures that you will not be heard. I have made this mistake almost every time I talk to someone. My first comment contradicts them and immediately I'm branded in their mind as a willing (or gullible) agent of "the enemy", whoever that is. We can speculate forever on why this happens, but we must be wiser if we are to succeed in changing minds. If you put that last segment at the very beginning, instead of the end, the readers would know that you oppose corporation control of healthcare, like them. Then they will be willing to hear you explain how corporatism occurs, which they may never have thought about, but is really the important point anyway. Once you explain that a truly "free market" should not be "corporations getting tax breaks and special deals", but "individuals exercising equal rights", people can realize that the labels were just switched and that's what they wanted all along. Then they are willing to hear the rest of your points, on the definition of rights, how insurance doesn't work in healthcare, etc. We really should remember that people don't know what we know and have been thoroughly deceived all of their lives about economic matters. Until fairly recently, I was too.

Posted 10/12/09 11:17 AM ScLiberty Edmonds, WA

Good response to that guy's rant. One thing that I am finding very hard in discussing the idea's of liberty with people like this is the lack of logos, or logical argument, in their discourse. Logic and rational reasoning are great tools, only if everyone abides by the rules of it. But this fellow you were arguing with has an argument that is rooted solely in emotion, and therefore arguing with logic with them doesn't have much effect, because as I just said, they aren't using logic. If you can first reach them on an emotional level, then maybe they will stop and listen to your logical argument as well.

Posted 10/12/09 12:43 PM JasonSchultz Grovetown, GA

Jonathan, A much clearer, simpler, and better argued article than the last one you wrote about healthcare unequivocally not being a natural right. This is an article that I will be passing on to many of my friends and families because they hear these same "problems" with our healthcare, but don't understand the Constitution or a historical perspective of what rights are. Well done.

Posted 10/12/09 7:51 PM WarIsARacket Boynton Beach, FL

This was extremely well written; you’ve presented your ideas on this topic without coming off as venomous and without demonizing the opposition. I feel that with this health care debate our arguments and rebuttals need to be presented with this civility; the way some of the town hall meetings have gone and the way the majority discuss their views the debate has become very deleterious. I say Bravo.