OPINION:
“Health care is not a ’right’” (Web, April 30) is another sad and ultimately unsuccessful attempt at explaining reality. Health care is not a “right” simply because it rests upon the axiom of obligation (enforced by violence). No natural right imposes any obligation or violence upon another; a natural right simply refers to what you’re entitled to on your own, something with which another cannot interfere.
For health care to be a “right” in the sense in which the selfish define it requires that those seeking it use government violence as a means to take money from other people to pay a third party to give you a free service for government-set pay. If you’re a taxpayer or a doctor, you must comply. So this “right” involves involuntary servitude (slavery) of two parties to benefit a third party.
Health care as a true natural right means that people in society cannot use any means to interfere with you obtaining it as you see fit. In a generally free society, your inability to obtain health care for any reason does not justify the imposition of violence or slavery upon others.
Slavery is the basic advocacy of liberals and anyone chanting that health care is a “right.” Helping the poor who cannot or will not help themselves is an entirely different matter and must be wholly voluntary. Otherwise, all you’re doing is enslaving one group to “help” another group. In doing so, one basically argues that the enslaved group deserves to be enslaved. How is that any different from, well, the leftist, “progressive” ideologies of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, et al?
CHRISTOPHER MCKEON
Spotsylvania, Va.
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