Quick question: What is health care?

I guess the answer isn't quite as simple as the question. What is health? The state of not being sick? The state of being well, or getting well? Because of the nature of humanity there is no right to be well or get well, so in that sense there can be no right to health. So, the words "health care" in the context of "right to health care" must refer to a right to attempt to be well, or to stay well.

Obviously, there are many ways to attempt to stay well. But don't we all have the right to attempt to do whatever we can do? As soon as I finish writing this post, I plan to run my three miles; not because I want to (I usually hate running, in fact), but because I have this caretaker inside me that makes me do it -- the idea being that if I do it, I'll be healthier than if I didn't do it. So, isn't my running a form of health care? Do I have a right to it? Of course. It's part of my right to be alive, and I have as much of a right to run as I do to eat and breathe.

But the left uses the word "right" in a different way. What Hillary means by the "right" to health care means that I would have a right to have other people pay if I can't afford it. This is absurd, and (I believe) unconstitutional. Not only does the federal government lack power to do it, but it violates the most basic notions of fairness, as well as personal conscience.

Let's stick with my example of running as a way of taking care of my health. Do I have the "right" to do that even when there's snow and ice on the ground and it is impossible or unhealthy to run outside? Well, maybe, but I'd have to either buy a treadmill or find an indoor track. These things cost money, though, and while I think I have a right to pay for them, do I have a right to compel other people to pay for them? It's my health care, isn't it? Eating healthy food is also health care; do I have a "right" to have other people pay for that too?

Or are these things not health care? Surely, they're of as much value as a regular visit to the doctor even though there's nothing wrong with me. But the reason I run or visit the doctor is ultimately to prolong (extend) my life.

It's a death avoidance scheme. Yet we all die, without exception. The extent that we manage to put it off, whether by exercise, eating properly, driving carefully, not touching high voltage lines, visiting the doctor, all these things and more affect how long we will live. Because they improve the quality of life, they might also be called self improvement.

Obviously, we all want to avoid death, and we would all like to improve the quality of our lives.

On what basis does medical care qualify above and beyond everything else we might do, as a special "right" (a word which is being misused) for which other people should have to pay?

Try as I might, I can't see Hillary's mandatory health care plan as anything other than a requirement that everyone who can afford it must pay for the medical care of everyone else.

What is really crazy is the way it's being likened to auto insurance:

Joking that her proposals "won't make me the insurance industry's woman of the year," Clinton said companies would no longer be able to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions or genetic predisposition to certain illnesses.

The centerpiece of Clinton's latest effort is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Such a mandate has detractors at both ends of the political spectrum, and questions abound over how it would be enforced.

"Perhaps more than anybody else I know just how hard this fight will be," said the New York senator.

Clinton adviser Laurie Rubiner said the mandate could be enforced in a number of ways, such as denying certain tax deduction to those who refused to buy insurance. But she stressed that a specific mechanism would be worked out once the plan was passed.

But compelling someone to have health insurance, simply because he is alive? Again, what is health? What is sick? We know what auto insurance is for. Cars hit each other, causing property damage, personal injuries, and death. But what is health care? Anyone who thinks this comes down to common sense should think again. Suppose I have a sore throat. Do I have to go to the doctor? What if I fall down and sprain my leg? Suppose I develop ugly warts and want them removed. Or what if I just feel bad and don't know what is wrong with me? Don't I have the option of going to the doctor or not? What if I just don't want the hassle, or want to save money? Or suppose I'm so crazy that I experienced a really severe injury, like a gunshot wound, and just decided to treat it myself. Don't I have the right to not go to the doctor; to not have health care? If I don't have to go to the doctor, by what right does society have a right to make me (and everyone else) pay for what I do not want?

Then there's the coverage issue. What if I only want a major medical, catastrophic coverage type of policy which won't pay for ordinary health care. Shouldn't I be allowed to pay for less if I use less? And if so, then why shouldn't I be allowed to pay for none and use none?

There's also a distinction I think is lost between the right to health care and the right to insurance. They are not the same thing. There already is a right to emergency health care. No hospital in the United States is allowed to refuse emergency care, but if something is not an emergency, then what right can there be to obtain care for it? The idea that someone has a right to see a doctor for a sore throat (and have that paid for by everyone else including people who refuse to see a doctor for a sore throat), it seems to me that this violates the human conscience.

There are other matters involving conscience. Should religious opponents of abortion have to pay for abortion-related health care? What about Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists, and people who disagree with the allopathic approach to medicine? Is there a right to see a shaman?

The answers aren't staring at me, but the two things that bother me the most are the mandatory nature of this, and the deception involved in calling something like health care a "right."

Health care may be many things, but it is not a right. Not the way they're talking about it here. It's mandatory nature makes it a duty. All who can pay, must pay. Whether they need it or want it for themselves or not, they must pay for those who can't. That's the real idea here.

Why can't they just admit that this is socialism?

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need:

In her plan, Clinton said families would receive tax credits to help pay for coverage. The tax credit would be designed to limit the premiums to a percentage of a family's income.

Federal subsidies would be provided for those who are not able to afford insurance, and large businesses would be expected to provide or help pay for their employees' insurance.

She would let the uninsured buy into two existing government insurance programs or buy private insurance, offer them financial help in paying premiums, and help small businesses cover their employees.

She would pay the $110 billion-a-year cost of the plan by raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 and by taxing companies that did not insure their employees.

"If you're one of tens of millions of Americans without coverage or if you don't like the coverage you have, you will have a choice of plans to pick from and you'll get tax credits to help pay for it. If you like the plan you have, you can keep it," she said.

It's easy to say that people who vote for her will get what they deserve. What about the rest of the country?

The only right I want is the right to opt out -- a right I still have. What hurts more than losing a right is to be told that losing it constitutes a "right."

MORE: I guess we should be grateful that Hillary isn't proposing a "right to work" along the same lines. (All people would work! And all not currently employed would have to go to work for the state!)

UPDATE (09/19/07): Here's Jacob Laksin:

...the new Clinton plan should make even a first-year economics student wince. For instance, Clinton proposes massive regulation of the insurance industry as means to "end discrimination" against those with pre-existing health problems. Aside from exaggerating the insurance industry's sins in this regard -- industry representatives say that that insurance companies reject only about 3 percent of claims, many of them for experimental procedures -- it also increases government regulation, and thus government's inefficient reach, into healthcare. An analogous flaw underlies Clinton's plan to compel drug companies to "offer fair prices." Instead of letting the free-market operate, the federal government will become the arbiter of fairness. One need only recall the disastrous price and wage controls of the seventies to see how well this will turn out.