Health care is not a right

Nor is housing, food, or any number of other things socialist nanny/welfare states try to say are fundamental human rights.

To me, it is a self-evident truth that your rights do not trump mine. If the only way you can afford food, shelter, clothing or health care is to force your fellow citizens to pay for them, then you have essentially decided that it is worth enslaving others to meet your needs.

Here's how we can see that health-care is not a right. Imagine that tomorrow every doctor, nurse, P.A., EMT, etc.--every health-care provider--decided to quit their jobs and refused to practice medicine. How then will you exercise your health-care "rights"? Many people will say that doctors will have to be forced to provide care. And those people have just espoused a form of slavery--forced labor is a form of slavery.

Forcing others to pay for your health-care is only somewhat removed from that far-fetched scenario. Each dollar removed from someone to pay for your health care is a dollar they worked to earn. A portion of their alloted time on this Earth was confiscated from them for your benefit.

While I'm on health-care here's some things to consider:

• About 10% of all health-care spending in the USA is obesity-related.
• Between 10 and 15% of all health-care spending in the USA is smoking-related.
• Health-care costs in the USA averaged $6,280 per person in 2004.
• Half of the population spends little or nothing on health care, while 5 percent of the population spends almost half of the total amount. Among this group, annual medical expenses (exclusive of health insurance premiums) equaled or exceeded $11,487 per person.
• In contrast, the 50 percent of the population with the lowest expenses accounted for only 3 percent of overall U.S. medical spending, with annual medical spending below $664 per person. Thus, those in the top 5 percent spent, on average, more than 17 times as much per person as those in the bottom 50 percent of spenders.
• The elderly (age 65 and over) made up around 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2002, but they consumed 36 percent of total U.S. personal health care expenses.
  
• A new study from the Mayo Clinic reports that intensive care accounts for 30 to 40 percent of hospital spending, with the majority of care given to elderly patients with chronic conditions.

Even if you think health-care should be provided by the government, do you think every person in the US (notice I didn't say citizen) should have unlimited benefits? Consider this article:

Ana Puente was an infant with a liver disorder when her aunt brought her illegally to the U.S. to seek medical care. She underwent two liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center as a child in 1989 and a third in 1998, each paid for by the state.

But when Puente turned 21 last June, she aged out of her state-funded health insurance and was unable to continue treatment at UCLA.

This year, her liver began failing again and she was hospitalized at County-USC Medical Center. In her Medi-Cal application, a USC doctor wrote, "Her current clinical course is irreversible, progressive and will lead to death without another liver transplant." The application was denied.

The county gave her medication but does not have the resources to perform transplants.

Late last month Puente learned of another, little-known option for patients with certain healthcare needs. If she notified U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that she was in the country illegally, state health officials might grant her full Medi-Cal coverage. Puente did so, her benefits were restored and she is now awaiting a fourth transplant at UCLA.

The average cost of a liver transplant and first-year follow-up is nearly $490,000, and anti-rejection medications can run more than $30,000 annually, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplantation nationwide.

What does Ana say about her situation?

"It doesn't matter if I'm undocumented," she said. "They should take care of me at UCLA for the rest of my life because I've been there since I was a baby."