SOC 490 Blog #2 How is universal health care a privilege and not a right?

A man by the name of Karl Marx was born in Trier, Prussia (modern day Germany) in 1818 and died in London, England in 1893. Marx was a man world renowned for his most famous work, Communist Manifesto. In this work Marx proposed that capitalism was a self-defeating system in which people with money hire other people without money to work for them and provide services. In Marx’s eyes a societal system should be based around work being performed for the common good and not for certain privileged individuals. In other words, he spearheaded the philosophy called Communism. Communism was implemented in multiple regions yet all were doomed into failure. Communism was perfect on paper, yet in actuality it crumbled away into nothingness. America is starting to head toward this disease filled notion.

Vast majorities of modern day Americans believe that the federal government needs to provide universal healthcare to all individuals. Therefore, they believe it is every human beings inherent right. The United States of America was founded upon the premise that one should work and be productive in order to thrive in society. Economic systems that compound ideologies based off of laziness, particularly in the thought of universal healthcare as a right, contradict the very idea of what it means to be a human being. Human beings are individuals who require work in order to gain reward. There are certainly cases of individuals in the U.S. that have their mental faculties impaired, or who cannot physically support themselves. These people need to be treated through the utilization of charitable endeavors.

The Government is not perfect, and as such it should not try to forcibly redistribute one’s hard-earned money to individuals who simply do nothing. This violates man’s inherent nature to private property. How would you like it if someone hypothetically came onto your land, gathered all of your produce (let’s say you grew corn) and then speckled that “wealth” all to other people who “needed it more.” Meanwhile, your family is suffering from lack of resources that are rightfully yours. Moreover, if Universal healthcare was deemed a right, the Government fails to take into account that human beings are inherently greedy and malicious. We are not infallible individuals. If we were then any form of socialism would be absolute and foolproof. But, again we are not, and we cannot pretend to be. In the end, a few insolent, power hungry individuals would monopolize health care and then only a few privileged would acquire coverage.  Socialized universal health care is not the path to take.

            On the opposite side of the argument, we have individuals who thoroughly believe that health care is a right. To elucidate on this further, they believe that “essential necessary care” is a right to be enjoyed by all people. Another word for this “necessary” mentality is “minimum.” However, according to Donald J. Boudreaux, “the problem is that notions of essential care are vague. Is medical care essential if doctors say it might improve by 50 percent an 80 year old’s chances of living an additional year? What about care that improves by 10 percent a 25 year olds chances of living an additional 50 years? Such questions are wickedly difficult to answer” (Boudreaux, pg.95). Where do you draw the line to determine essential universal health care? This question continues to be the topic of hot debate.

            Let us imagine for a moment the United States in the future ruled by socialized medicine. The doctors will have three challenging choices to make. Should I comply with the government and let them decide what kind of care I can provide? Should I take matters into my own hands and provide health care under the table? Or should I simply quit my profession and hope that the system works itself out in the end? According to Leonard Peikoff, “to call medical care will merely enslave the doctors and thus destroy the quality of medical care in this country, as socialized medicine has done around the world, wherever it has been tried, including Canada” (Peikoff, pg.90). The only solution to this socialized medical health care scheme is for doctors and health care providers to portray their own rights. Doctors are not pawns in a convoluted bureaucracy game. They have their own rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If they choose to provide health care in an alternative fashion then so be it. That is their right. The Government is not infallible and has the capacity of being corrupt.

Many individuals who are strong proponents of universal health care being a right are under an incorrect assumption. They believe that the rich population of America are the ones paying the vast quantity of money needed for health care. This is dead wrong. First off, to be considered “rich” in the U.S. that means you can comprise the 1-2% of all Americans. It is directly impossible for this 1-2% of the upper crust to reliably contribute to universal health care coverage. A recent Commonwealth Fund survey found that four in 10 working-age adults skipped some kind of care because of the cost, and other surveys have found much the same. This is because the price of the average deductible has more than doubled in recent years. Not to mention the price of copays, coinsurance, and the price of drugs to add to the mix. The middle class of the U.S. are the ones that primarily pay for the health care system. It is not large, successful companies that help carry the load but rather small businesses that pick up the slack when they do not have the necessary resources to do so. As Peikoff states, “ it is the little people who do most of the paying for it under the senseless pretext that the people cant afford such and such, so the government must take over” (Peikoff, pg. 90-91). Nothing is free in this world. We do not live in a Utopia, and we need to stop pretending to think that we do.