Is health care a right or a privilege?

[Matt Collins]

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False Alternatives: "Is Health Care a Right or a Privilege?"
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PERSUASION POWER POINT # 274[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] by Michael Cloud

"Do you believe health care is a right or a privilege?" the CNN host asked two guests.

"Health care is a right, not a privilege," said speaker after speaker at televised memorials for the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

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"Is health care a right or a privilege?" ask hosts and guests on NPR, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC. You'll read the question dozens of times on Big Government blogs and Web sites. In essays and articles by Big Government partisans promoting government-run medical care or government medical insurance.

The right answer: "It's neither. The question is what logic texts call the False Alternative Fallacy. The question is an example of an unscrupulous, manipulative sales technique: the Alternative of Choice Close. The words 'right' and 'privilege' are loaded and deceptive. May I explain?"

1. The False Alternative Fallacy: If health care is NOT a right, then it's a privilege. If it's NOT a privilege, then it's a right. False. Many widely desired things are neither rights NOR privileges. Literacy is neither a right nor a privilege. Good nutrition is neither a right nor a privilege. Success is neither a right nor a privilege. Love is neither a right nor a privilege. Other alternatives: health care is a desirable service, but NOT a legal right. Or: universal health care, like universal literacy, is a desirable social goal, but NOT a legally-guaranteed entitlement.

2. The Alternative of Choice sales technique: "Which is health care? A right or a privilege? You choose." Sales trainers have taught this manipulative sales technique since the 1930s. "Would you like one egg in your malt or two?" (Maybe you want none.) "Do you want the red sweater or the blue one?" (Maybe you want neither, or a jacket.) This "Do you want this, or that?" technique gives buyers the illusion of choice, to get them to turn off their critical thought process and buy one or the other. The health care "right or privilege" question is designed to make its victims choose between caring for everyone -- or being an uncaring cad.

3. The word "right" in the question means "government-granted entitlement," NOT the natural or God-given rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness that the American Revolution was fought for. When the government grants these kinds of "rights" or entitlements to individuals or groups, it saddles taxpayers with the obligation to fund or provide them. If person X or group Y have a government-granted right to medical services and medicines, then taxpayers are legally obligated to pay for it through taxes or government mandates. Every government-granted "right" is an obligation on you.

Rephrase the first part of the question to this: "Are American citizens obligated to pay for other people's medical insurance, or medical services, or drugs and medicines?" Or: "Should American taxpayers be obligated to pay medical costs of those who smoke, or drink too much, or use dangerous drugs, or overeat, or refuse to exercise, or engage in reckless or irresponsible behaviors?"

A government-granted right to medical care is your obligation, your increased taxes, your cost, your burden.

4. Consider the meaning of "privilege": "a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor; especially: such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office." (Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary.)

Here's another dirty little secret behind the false and deceptive health care question: they are trying to con us into choosing between "health care guaranteed to all, or to only the privileged few." This level of trickery goes beyond Karl Marx. It goes all they way to Groucho Marx. Except government-controlled or government-run medicine might just make us laugh all the way to a too-early grave.

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[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] 5. The right questions to ask about medical care and medical insurance:

* Which laws, regulations, or government mandates drive up the costs of medical care, medicine, and medical insurance?

* Which of these laws, regulations, and government mandates can your state legislature and governor repeal? Which need to be repealed by the U.S. Senate, the House, and the president?

* Which government-granted privileges and special protections has government enacted for the benefit of pharmaceutical corporations, hospitals, doctors, nurses, lawyers, or insurance companies that make medical care more expensive?

* Which of these privileges and special protections can your state legislature and governor repeal? Which need to be repealed by the U.S. Senate, the House, and the president?

* What other cost-lowering medical alternatives are forbidden or blocked by state government or the federal government?

* Can these be repealed on the state level -- or do they need to be repealed on the federal level?

* What other laws and regulations can we repeal to give patients and doctors more choices? To improve the quality of medical care? To lower the costs of medical care enough to make them as affordable as food, clothing, and shelter in America?

Do NOT let the political con artists prey on your family, friends, and co-workers. Share this column with them. Forward this issue of Liberator Online to them.



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Michael Cloud is author of the acclaimed book Secrets of Libertarian Persuasion, available exclusively from the Advocates.

In 2000, Michael was honored with the Thomas Paine Award as the Most Persuasive Libertarian Communicator in America.[/FONT]

 

[heavenlyboy34]

health care is a service!

 

[Anti Federalist]

Neither, it's a commodity.

 

[jmdrake]

Healthcare, like food, clothing or shelter, is a need. People fulfill their own needs best when they have both the freedom and the responsibility to make choices. It's no accident that the nutrition of the poor went down after food stamps.

 

[Bman]

It's a right to be able to seek health care. It's not a right to force a doctor to give you health care.

 

[Standing Like A Rock]

It is as need/service. However most people have the right to seek health care and the privilege to receive it if they can afford it.

 

[dannno]

health care is a service!

You're a service!

 

[IamPersistent]

I think this is typical of the whole problem with every issue that comes up. Everything is declared to be binary.

We have to have government run health care or insurance company run health care. We have to bailout big business or the economy will fail. We have to have preemptive wars or we will be attacked. Or the greatest or all, government has to do it or it won't get done.

I think when people get out of the binary mindset, we can start finding solutions.

 

[dizi24]

I think health care is most certainly a right. The problem comes from the fact that the left has confused this with the meaning that everyone should have health care and taxes should support it.

I'll buy into this thinking as soon as liberals decide that guns are a right, as declared by our constitution, so they should open federal gun shops funded by the tax payer where I can go in and buy as many guns as I want free of charge.

After all, no man deserves to be left defenseless in his home unable to defend himself because he can't afford a gun. And a baseball bat or a knife isn't enough. We live in a country where everyone should have the same access to home defense and shouldn't be left to choose a weapon of inferior quality.

 

[Dunedain]

The medical service industry provides goods and services. Health care is a good and a service (drugs/medical services). No one has a right to a good or a service unless they were willing to pay for it.

Same as no one has a right to food....and that's even more critical than healthcare.

 

[PaulaGem]

1. The False Alternative Fallacy: If health care is NOT a right, then it's a privilege. If it's NOT a privilege, then it's a right. False. Many widely desired things are neither rights NOR privileges. Literacy is neither a right nor a privilege. Good nutrition is neither a right nor a privilege. Success is neither a right nor a privilege. Love is neither a right nor a privilege. Other alternatives: health care is a desirable service, but NOT a legal right. Or: universal health care, like universal literacy, is a desirable social goal, but NOT a legally-guaranteed entitlement.

2. The Alternative of Choice sales technique: "Which is health care? A right or a privilege? You choose." Sales trainers have taught this manipulative sales technique since the 1930s. "Would you like one egg in your malt or two?" (Maybe you want none.) "Do you want the red sweater or the blue one?" (Maybe you want neither, or a jacket.) This "Do you want this, or that?" technique gives buyers the illusion of choice, to get them to turn off their critical thought process and buy one or the other. The health care "right or privilege" question is designed to make its victims choose between caring for everyone -- or being an uncaring cad.

Two very good paragraphs from the OP. I believe that everyone (especially children in and out of the womb) has a right to good healthcare. I don't believe the government should provide it at this time because it is fiscally impossible and the people in government are not people I would trust to have any influence whatsoever over my personal healthcare.

If Constitutional government were restored (which I define as an elected government which is responsible to the people for their decisions) and the country became fiscally sound, then there would be a list of things that I would expect the government to supervise and certain social safety nets that I would expect government to provide. I believe without the FED siphoning off the wealth of the country and corporate welfare, we could afford these things and providing a basic standard of living would make everyone safer, healthier, and happier.

I would expect this to be done on both the state and federal level, depending on the scope and administration of the program, but I would expect these privileges of being a citizen of the United States to be granted to legal residents only, with equal availability of these privileges in every state.

I would consider children born of illegal residents to be citizens. As citizens I would extend the safety net to them, but I would put the health and well being of that child before the "rights" of the parents because I believe by being in this country illegally they are not subject to the same protection as citizens.

I know there are some who would disagree, but I would make it clear that anyone who comes to this country illegally with minor children would risk losing them if they did not take care of them or abused them in any way. It would simply be that illegal aliens had fewer rights than their children.

 

[InterestedParticipant]

False Alternatives: "Is Health Care a Right or a Privilege?"

Whenever someone asks you a question and only gives you an either-or option as a response, tell them to stick their contrived dialectic where the Sun don't shine and walk away, for this is how managed perception works. They frame the debate in simplistic options (ie dialectics) and only allow the respondents to think, discuss and answer the question WITHIN the constraints of the frame (ie dialectic).

There is nothing libertarian about this technique, for a real libertarian would not attempt to constrain another's thoughts within some artificial boundaries - like the dialectic of "health care is a right" versus "heath care is a privilege."

A more honest question would be, what do you think our problem is, or what are the issues, and how do you see we best address those issues and problems? This way, you are letting the respondent define the problems as they see them and then determine the solutions as they best see them. You are not putting the respondent in a little child-box and asking them to chose which corner they stand in, and then try to convince the respondent that they live in a free society, when all they get to do is decide which part of the box they stand in, or whether they get fries with that burger or not.

Say NO to these types of techniques, the techniques of employing manufactured dialectics to control the parameters of your thinking. This is not the way a real free and open society works. This is how a society that is pretending to be free works.

 

[Ninja Homer]

You have a right to choose your own form of caring for your health. And I have a right to keep my money and not pay for your expensive health care choice. I also have a right to refuse government health care and pay for it via taxes.

The worst part of universal health care is that later on there will be all kinds of government health mandates in the name of lowering health care costs. Don't get your yearly check-up? That's illegal. Don't take your prescribed drugs? That's illegal. Don't get your flu shot? That's illegal.

To me, health care as a right means that I have the right to refuse to take allopathic medicine, and I have the right to do whatever I want to with my own body.

 

[Matt Collins]

Whenever someone asks you a question and only gives you an either-or option as a response, tell them to stick their contrived dialectic where the Sun don't shine and walk away, for this is how managed perception works. They frame the debate in simplistic options (ie dialectics) and only allow the respondents to think, discuss and answer the question WITHIN the constraints of the frame (ie dialectic).

There is nothing libertarian about this technique, for a real libertarian would not attempt to constrain another's thoughts within some artificial boundaries - like the dialectic of "health care is a right" versus "heath care is a privilege."

A more honest question would be, what do you think our problem is, or what are the issues, and how do you see we best address those issues and problems? This way, you are letting the respondent define the problems as they see them and then determine the solutions as they best see them. You are not putting the respondent in a little child-box and asking them to chose which corner they stand in, and then try to convince the respondent that they live in a free society, when all they get to do is decide which part of the box they stand in, or whether they get fries with that burger or not.

Say NO to these types of techniques, the techniques of employing manufactured dialectics to control the parameters of your thinking. This is not the way a real free and open society works. This is how a society that is pretending to be free works.

Mr. Cloud has several books out on this subject. They are DAMN good reading too! I own one of them (so far).

 

[Objectivist]

How about this?

Healthcare is available to anyone in America.

Try getting it out in the African savannah miles from any facilities.