Health ought to be an inalienable right - Linda Semones

I am posting the letter to the editor, but I need to ask: What can be said in response to this? How can one tender a rejoinder to something so far removed from historical understanding?

I suppose one could set about to systematically refute the various statements offered by the letter writer, but how does one undo the tangled web and then mount an effective case for the actual facts? I submit to you that it is barely possible, given the starting place of the letter writer's understanding. So why bother?

Nevertheless, I will briefly offer some commentary that should help to answer the writer's questions.

There is a fundamental, flawed premise. So once that is dealt with, the rest of the letter is irrelevant. An unalienable right is a feature of human existence that cannot be separated from you by government action. An unalienable right makes no requirement that someone to act on your behalf for its existence. 

Therefore, healthcare cannot be an unalienable right. Healthcare is not a feature of existence, it is a something that might facilitate a different level of existence, an enhancement beyond mere life itself. It is a commodity. Something of value changes hands. Providing healthcare is transaction between parties for services, which means someone pays for the service, someone renders the service, and someone receives the service. 

There are rights that are established by law from time to time. These are not the same as unalienable rights. A legal right places a burden on someone to perform for someone else. This diminishes the payor and enhances the payee by transferring things of value. And, since the right was established by law (i.e., the action of government), the right can be rescinded by a subsequent action of government. 

Therefore, it is not unalienable. Healthcare is not an unalienable right.

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We all know this elegant statement Thomas Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence, adopted in 1776.

I have a question about this.

How can a person exercise their inalienable right to life when they need a bone marrow transplant and cannot get it because they have no health insurance?

How can a person exercise their inalienable right to liberty when their need for a hip replacement dominates their life with tooth-grinding pain and inability to walk (or sleep or sit) because they do not have health insurance to pay for the surgery?

How can a person exercise their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness when their children are suffering from a curable illness because they do not have health insurance?

Members of Congress understand this — they have provided themselves with great health insurance!

Hmmm. Maybe Jefferson just meant these rights are just for members of Congress. But that doesn’t explain the “all men are created equal” part, does it? Just wondering.

Linda Semones, Bozeman