The Classical Liberal View of RFK Jr: Healthcare is Not a Human Right
Real human rights are never win-lose.
Yesterday, at the confirmation hearing for RFK Jr., many Democrats were angry. Bernie Sanders demanded that Kennedy agree “that the United States should join every other major country on Earth and guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right.”
“Yes or no?” Sanders righteously thundered.
Kennedy tried to explain why free speech is a human right, but healthcare is different “because free speech doesn’t cost anyone anything.” Kennedy gave the example of a smoker who gets cancer, whose treatment others have to fund.
Sanders did not let Kennedy continue, so I will explain where Kennedy went and why healthcare is not a human right.
Does an alcoholic have a right to a government-sponsored liver transplant? Does an infertile couple have a right to fertility treatments paid for by taxpayers? Does an individual who eats six donuts a day have a right to diabetes treatment gratis? Does a transgender individual have a right to free sex reassignment surgery?
Americans will never agree on such questions. What some claim as “rights” are ill-defined and ever-expanding; they are not rights at all.
Consider the alcoholic’s “right” to a liver transplant. To grant that right means that someone else has the obligation, not a free choice, to pay for the transplant. That is a win-loss arrangement. When one person’s exercise of her “right” to a transplant conflicts with another person’s exercise of his “rights” to his well-being, the right to a transplant cannot be called a human right.
In Volume 2 of Law, Legislation and Liberty: the Mirage of Social Justice, Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek explains there can be no “right to a particular state of affairs unless it is the duty of someone to secure it.”
Real human rights are never win-lose. They do not elevate the rights of some while diminishing the rights of others. Real human rights are win-win.
Kennedy was correct in contrasting the real human right of free speech vs. the false one of healthcare.
The natural right of self-ownership to your physical being doesn’t conflict with somebody else’s right of self-ownership to their physical being. You have the right not to be coerced if you do not harm or coerce someone else. Real human rights are well-defined and finite.
When we are fixated on ill-defined “rights” such as the “right to good health care,” our focus shifts to outcomes. Such a focus leads to dissatisfaction and a widespread feeling that something is wrong. Why? There is always an outcome to be dissatisfied with. Our “particular state of affairs” is always lacking something.
Consider your own life. Could you not point to at least some problematic circumstances? Perhaps your health, financial situation, career, or family relationships are troublesome in some way.
Now expand your circle to include family and friends. There are many more problematic circumstances to be concerned about. Now, expand your circle to individuals or groups you read about in the newspaper. There are almost infinite problematic circumstances; some of these circumstances, by their nature, will never be resolved. When we focus on rights that are impossible to define, we are constantly focused on outcomes, and we are constantly inventing new rights.
Whose duty is it to correct these circumstances? Many would answer, “Society’s.” Of course, there is no “society” that can act apart from the actions of individuals. Hayek reminds us that if we maintain that correcting a problematical circumstance is a matter of social justice, then we will impose a duty on someone or some group to correct the problematical circumstance.
All this said, there are many things government funds that are not rights, but there is support for, and a minimal level of healthcare might be one of these things.
There are no easy answers, but RFK Jr is correct in pointing out that funding one thing means something else isn’t supported.
It is essential to understand what human rights are. This is something the Democrats, which today is the party of censorship, know nothing about.
Since there is no human right to healthcare, Kennedy rightfully points to prevention. Major reductions in healthcare expenditures through dietary and other changes allow a humane society to better assist those in dire circumstances, which some fall into despite their best efforts. Our responsibility to others begins with our efforts to live a healthy lifestyle.
How ironic that the Democrats, the party of Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Medicine, are intent on denying a national conversation on how to make America healthy again.
On Saturday, we begin discussing Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks at Mindset Shifts U. I hope you can join us.
Some of these gaps between what is a Right, and what is right is where Charity fits in. We can feel a Natural Charity for people who are suffering, due to no fault of their own, and even sometimes for people who are suffering due to their own bad choices. If we feel that Charity we may CHOOSE to act on it. Then it is our choice to give money, or help in some other manner from our own time and/or money. As Barry stated, no one else is being harmed by our choice, but ourselves, and we have chosen to take that small harm/inconvenience, because we have weighed that choice in our own lives.
When it's a larger situation, we can choose to pool our time/money with other like minded folks, who also agree that they wish to participate, through a church, where we have chosen to donate and trust that the leadership is making good decisions that we agree with for the most part. Or through crowding funding, such as GiveSendGo or GoFundMe, again, where feel that the money will be going to help the situation and not just to admin fees (A big problem with many secular "charities".)
When there is government intervention in the form of enforced compliance, we no longer have the choice as to where our money is going. As Barry mentioned, we may not agree with it from a moral or ethical standpoint, or even we just may not agree, at all. The government has put so many regulations in place that its hard for people to take care of themselves, and hard for them to take care of each other. (No collecting rainwater, no growing gardens, no sending food or supplies to disaster victims, no selling the product of your own creating - enforced seatbelts, enforced insurance for vehicles, health - taxing property and life insurance.) So, by creating more "rights" to enforce, they are creating more theft that we must finance AGAINST our own right to choose and thus removing our incentives to rouse our own senses towards Charity and serving each other. We are not allowed to love our neighbor, or practice the character building trait of self-sacrifice. And I think this is on purpose, even if it is not a conscious consideration by the non-entity of government.
I often find it ironic that the very people who are all about evolution and Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest", are also the ones that tear down people's livelihoods over a mouse or bird, or even a few people's stupid choices such as drinking or jumping off buildings or driving fast in their quest to "feel good" and exercise power over other people's choices in their own smug "morality".
Many of the continuing problems with our society were on display yesterday. We have elected leaders that are self serving and incompetent. Any rational person would recognize RFK’jrs desire to make our country a better place to live. He has no personal agenda that would preclude him from confirmation, in my opinion. Of course, I don’t agree with every one of his positions. If this is supposed to be a wise deliberative body, then we are in real trouble. Shameful.