Many who oppose universal care talk about the financial cost of universal health care, but I want to focus on the real cost.
I believe in human rights. I am committed to compassionate causes. I believe we have an obligation to care for the poor, the sick and the needy among us. We also have a duty to watch over and protect the elderly, the disabled and the very young. In general, I think we're happier when we watch over and help each other.
Genuine compassion is an important ingredient to fixing our health insurance woes, but it is under the very guise of compassion that many proponents of universal health care do more harm than good. I've been told that there is no compassion in a system that allows people to suffer and die because they can't afford insurance. In response, I ask, is it compassionate to ask those very people who most deserve our help and protection to commit to a path that leads away from freedom and happiness? The answer is NO. This cost is too high.
The founding fathers of our country believed that what we now call human rights were God-given and self-evident. Self-evident, god-given rights are rights we are born with in our most natural, least hampered state. Humans are universally endowed with these natural rights. All people in this natural state can be born, use their mental capacities, and seek for what makes them happy, without government assistance or even the knowledge of government. While the government can take away a life through a death or prison sentence, it cannot give it. It can take away our liberty by creating a police and nanny state, but it has only to get out of the way for us to have it again. In protecting us from each other, a power-hungry government has found a million incremental ways to take away our freedoms in exchange for "security".
A progressive society strives to replace "god-given" with "government-given" and "self-evident" with "politically prudent". Progressives claim that health care is a right. By making this claim they propose that human rights are "government-provided". Social programs like universal health care are not "self-evident" or "god-given", they are a direct attack on the very foundations of our country and must be met head-on.
If we agree to this progressive definition of human rights, then we capitulate to the idea that it is the government, not a higher power, who provides those rights. If the government provides our rights, it will be the government who decides our rights. Who merits rights, how, what and when we receive them all become open to the whims of politicians and the trends of the moment.
Since the government would then be in charge of your health, it will also have a direct interest in making sure you are making healthy (i.e. cost efficient) choices. This is a slippery slope of direct and universal governmental intrusion into daily life.
What the government gives, the government can and will take away, ration and control.
Of course, there are other concerns regarding universal health care. If we were today to accept universal health care we would not only pay directly, but also indirectly in the form of increased taxation. The government will take our money and using new and improved rules decide what our doctors can charge, what procedures we can do, and limit our pharmaceuticals to whichever they've been able to buy in bulk. Such programs cannot be maintained unless there are more people putting in more money than are taking out. This balanced triangle quickly becomes inverted in times of population flux, economic downturn and a multitude of other factors. Those still supporting the programs will be increasingly relied upon to fund it. As we've seen in European countries, universal health care is also a blinking neon light to all those who most need it, adding increasingly complicated immigration issues that create further imbalances in the system.
A study on health care in the U.S. concluded that "competition occurs at the wrong level, over the wrong things, in the wrong geographical markets, at the wrong time." (Porter & Teisberg). It's time to do something right where health care is concerned.
I think it's not only time to recognize the real problems of our health insurance industry, but to also remember that there is always more than one solution to any problem. Those who'd like to see us become like France, or anywhere else in Europe, have failed to recognize the greatest benefit of living in a country that still recognizes and protects true human rights and restrains the arm of the government. Let's be a little less concerned about letting the government protect us from each other and a little more concerned about who is going to protect us from our own government should we continue to surrender our rights for "security".
Let us be compassionate to our children as they grow up in a world that still protects their freedom from such governmental power and intrusion.
Universal care is not the answer because the ultimate cost is our freedom.