Our comrade-in-chief has touted healthcare as a “right” that all people are entitled to. In that regard, I assume he views healthcare in the same vein as the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. When one looks at those principles that are ascribed as rights, what is observed is that they are A) seen as God-given liberties that can only be denied through tyranny (as with the Declaration of Independence); B) seen as a protection guaranteeing individual liberty (as with the Bill of Rights); and C) revolve around freedoms that are intrinsic to an individual, but which do not deprive others of their liberties.

Regarding the last point, for example, the First Amendment guarantees that I have the “right” to practice my religion without molestation by the government. It also guarantees my right to express my point of view without fear of reprisal. The Second Amendment ensures that I have the “right” to bear arms and protect myself. These “rights” protect a citizen’s liberty without depriving another citizen of their rights.

When I write this blog, I do not deprive another of their “rights.” When I purchase a firearm, I am, again, not depriving someone of their fundamental liberties. When I worship on Sunday, I am not depriving someone of something. It appears that what we, as a body politic, have always viewed as valid rights has always leaned toward protecting citizens’ liberty, but never at the expense of others.

A basic principle seems to underlie our historical understanding and application of “rights”: basic rights never come at the expense of others. When we apply this principle to the “right” to healthcare, it becomes clear that healthcare cannot be seen as a fundamental liberty as historically defined.

Obama has just passed the first step in guaranteeing healthcare as a basic right. His goal is to make it available at little to no cost to the average citizen. To do this, the government must control all costs, from the price of prescriptions to the salaries of doctors and nurses. Unfortunately, to make healthcare a basic right, the government must reduce the liberties of those who have, through personal sacrifice and ingenuity, made the American health system what it is today.

Many people who enter the health care industry do so at great personal expense. Your average doctor spends twelve years in higher education and enters the workforce with over a hundred thousand dollars in debt. The average pharmaceutical company spends hundreds of millions of dollars to bring a single product to market.

For the government to artificially reduce the cost of its products and services, it has to limit the income potential of everyone involved. In doing so, the government must necessarily reduce the industry’s ability to produce, through innovation and research, the services that benefit the average citizen. Hence, to “benefit” the patient by guaranteeing a new “right,” the government must reduce the liberty of the entire medical field by limiting both their income potential and their ability to produce the needed goods and services. Further, in an ironic twist, in seeking to benefit the citizen with the “right” of healthcare, the government unwittingly reduces his ability to receive the best goods and services available. All are harmed in the long run!

Our healthcare industry is the best in the world because many brilliant people have had the freedom to pursue their passions in a system that guaranteed them that freedom. No one has the right to freely benefit from the ingenuity of others. In the past, this has been called either charity or theft. While charity is good and desirable and has its place, it cannot sustain an industry that produces the excellent services that benefit others.

Further, if I benefit from someone else’s hard work and ingenuity, then they have a right to be rewarded even as I have reaped the rewards of their hard work. This is the basis of capitalism and why our society has seen an exponential increase in quality of life.

I want those in the health care industry to have the freedom to do what they do best – pursuing excellence in medicine. Further, I want them to have the incentive to pursue excellence.

We have a medical field only because of the basic liberties that were guaranteed at the founding of our nation. The people were left unmolested to be creative and inventive. The results have been wonderful. Inventing new rights that harm others only reduces incentive, discourages ingenuity, and lowers the standard of living for everyone involved.

Our founding fathers were wise men. A single sentence of their wisdom outweighs all the sophistry of our president and his puppets:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”