That being aside, the congress has just passed a bill that, in their own language, purports to extend an explicit right. Such a thing is within the power of the congress, to recognize and protect the rights of the people, however, I have wondered if they have fully thought out the nature of such a right.
The maintenance of rights is, and remains, by recognition of numerous court cases and the founder’s own papers, the purpose of government. The preservation of those rights against all takers is paramount in the nature of the social compact, and the essence of the republic.
Rights, by their nature, cannot come into conflict. If two rights appear to come into conflict, the one of them cannot be any right at all, but merely the illusion of a right.
Such, to this idiot’s mind, seems to be the case of health care. The essence of rights is that no person may have a right for which they must ask permission prior to use, gain authorization, make amends or payment. The exercise of that right must be left to the discretion of the user. Rights in the original sense, in the unalienable and fundamental sense, are not established by social contract, but by the innate nature of the human being.
We have the fundamental right to our own lives, our own properties, our own liberty, and our own ability to protect the above. Without regard to laws that purport to modify it, or to restrict it, these were the reasons for the creation of government.
From the Jehova’s Witnesses, to the cases of laundries in San Francisco, we’ve had many court cases establishing that right as a property, eligible for suit within the courts of law. Yick Wo v Hopkins went so far as to state:
When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power. Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but, in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power. It is, indeed, quite true that there must always be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final decision, and in many cases of mere administration, the responsibility is purely political, no appeal lying except to the ultimate tribunal of the public judgment, exercised either in the pressure of opinion or by means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, the government of the commonwealth "may be a government of laws, and not of men." For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life at the mere will of another seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.
The judgment within the Jehova’s Witnesses cases was similar.
We think that the ordinance is invalid on its face. Whatever the motive which induced its adoption, its character is such that it strikes at the very foundation of the freedom of the press by subjecting it to license and censorship. The struggle for the freedom of the press was primarily directed against the power of the licensor. It was against that power that John Milton directed his assault by his 'Appeal for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.' And the liberty of the press became initially a right to publish 'without a license what formerly could be published only with one.' 1 While this freedom from previous restraint upon publication cannot be regarded as exhausting the guaranty of liberty, the prevention of that restraint was a leading purpose in the adoption of the [303 U.S. 444, 452] constitutional provision. See Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U.S. 454, 462 , 27 S.Ct. 556, 10 Ann.Cas. 689; Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 , 713-716, 51 S.Ct. 625, 630; Grosjean v. American Press Company, 297 U.S. 233, 245 , 246 S., 56 S.Ct. 444, 447. Legislation of the type of the ordinance in question would restore the system of license and censorship in its baldest form.
If it is a right, one cannot license it, one cannot put limitations upon the places or means with which one utilizes to exercise the right, save those that are directly injurious to others. One cannot place a right within a box, and then determine the means by which it may be lawfully exercised, after taxation, nor may it establish that the exerciser may be limited by prior action. The right is universal, not to be licensed, sold, or taxed, and unlimited in both scope and bearing. It is a property subject to judicial suit for its lack.
One cannot presuppose doctors will work for free, nor donate their hours, their lives, and their time to that which does not give them gain, or even food upon which to live. Their investment of time is their own property. One cannot require someone to give their property, even for the greater good, without just recompense. To do so would be, as Yick Wo v Hopkins said, ‘nothing less than the essence of slavery itself’. To tax for the exercise of a right is also not congruent with the nature of a right. It is a licensure, and but for that licensure, a procurement or use of that right would automatically be unlawful.
One side or the other must fall. Either the doctor’s property in their own lives is immaterial, or the people’s right to health care is not a right at all. One cannot force a doctor to labour with no recompense without falling under the thirteenth amendment prohibition against slavery, an absolute prohibition extended and expanded under the 1957 treaty for the abolition of slavery, and institutions like slavery.
Where two rights appear to conflict, one right is no right at all. The right of property within the doctor's own life conflicts with the supposed right to universal health care. While one can recognize the 'right' to universal health care... the doctors do not have to provide. To force them to provide is just another means of servitude.
Where a legislative right comes up against an absolute, human right, the legislative right must fall.
Furthermore, any right under the constitutional mandate is not merely extended to citizens, but by, and under international law, extended to all who operate and live within our borders. This was recognized as late as 1910. The legislature does not have the power to alter this. If there is a right to health care, all must receive the same care, from the richest to the poorest, and all have the right to the best health care, medications, and treatment available for their problem.
No matter where they are from.
For free. Forever.
When a legislative, or executive panel determines the nature, the quantity, and the allowable costs of health care, it cannot be a right. It cannot be that a panel can defer responsibility for their decisions in a patient’s care to a doctor who is under duress to follow their orders, allowing malpractice suits upon the doctor rather than the panel.
No doctor could knowingly operate in such a fashion and still be ethical. They must give the best care, the best treatment, and the best, and most appropriate decisions for their patient’s care. To say a panel can determine what is ‘best’ and the doctor is left holding the responsibility for their decisions is also a matter of involuntary servitude.
Moreover, there can be no delay in the exercise of an established right. The right must be available immediately, and in its final form, not in the form of the choosing of the legislature. Not in four years... today.
If it is a 'right to health insurance', rather than a 'right to health care', the people should have the choice of exercising the right, or not... just as they choose to exercise the right to alter or abolish their government... or not.
As wonderful as the idea of total health insurance appears on paper, this total idiot, at least, recognizes that the only way to accomplish it is to force labor in their behalf, to ration it to those ‘deserving’ of care, and to actually create a far worse fiasco than if the system were left alone with all of its issues. It would actually be better for the nation if full deregulation took place than if we attempt to, by legislative fiat, determine that nature of care without regard to the human lives involved.
But what do I know? I’m a total idiot.
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