Last week we were having a normal weekend day with the family. My daughter was her jovial self, though slightly lethargic. She had just gotten over a bout of bronchitis. It was a pretty routine day. A few hours after we put her to bed, she started having a coughing attack. It was a weird barking sound. I noticed she was having problems breathing so I picked her up and kept her in my arms for a while. The episodes continued so we decided to bring her to the emergency room. It turns out she had croup. We were out in slightly less than two hours, not bad, with a two day prescription of cortisone. This got me thinking about health care again and I happened to come across this article a few days later.
Ms. Mahar’s article is based on the premise of Health Care as a moral obligation. She starts out by saying she has a problem with the language of rights, because it conveys an image “of an aggrieved, resentful mob of freeloaders dunning the rest of us for having the simple good luck of being relatively healthy and relatively wealthy.” Leaving aside the fact that wealth can be squandered and it takes more than luck to create wealth, I get the sense she thinks health care is a right, only she’s uncomfortable with the “language of rights” because it can be thwarted by conservatives and libertarians.
One can easily refute the notion of Health Care as a right. A right cannot infringe on other rights. The right of a single payer, universal system necessitates a restriction on freedom. We are forced to participate in the government system, while being denied the option of pursuing private care. The Chaoulli v Quebec case already threatens our health care system, with a ruling that states delays in service violate our “Charter rights to life and security of the person.” The closed mindedness of liberals, resisting attempts at innovation, while stubbornly insisting that there can be no private service – a lot of this is posturing to score points against conservatives – has two sources. One, liberals seek to equalize results. We are all going to get the exact same service and coverage, regardless of personal choice and ability to pay. Two, empowered citizens making their own decisions is bad business for liberals. They need you dependent.
This brings us to the moral obligation question. Whenever someone tells you that you have a moral obligation to such and such, grab your wallets. Big government prescriptions are about to follow – hello Al Gore. You see, if this is a moral obligation, sacrifice is necessary. Liberals have all the catch phrases ready to make you accept the need for these sacrifices, “human rights”, “collective good”, “moral obligation” and so on. Who’s against a moral right? Besides Iceland, Canada spends more on health care than all other OECD nations, in relation to GDP, yet we are falling short of all major indicators. Whether we are speaking of Doctors per capita, access to high tech medical devices or infant mortality, Canada ranks dismally low. It seems the public service has some deficiency. Should a moral right have a qualification that goes along with it, such as results?
On our present course, our health care system is not sustainable. All the parties, even conservatives, have thrown more and more money at health care, hoping to make our system better. But it’s never enough. Once we inject money, new needs arise. When you separate people from the responsibility of providing for themselves, it is hard to have a frank conversation with them about the cost and efficacy of a particular program. A politician cannot utter words like privatization, efficiency or cost reduction, without being labelled a right wing nut. It’s irrational.
In the U.K, certain procedures are being denied to people if they smoke and doctors are suggesting old and unhealthy people should not be able to get treatment. Do your “human rights” change when you make bad lifestyle choices? In 2006, Canadians waited an average of 17.8 weeks after a specialist was recommended, a wait 91% higher than wait times in 1993. Socialism always fails; sometimes it just takes a long time.
It never seizes to amaze that liberals will not countenance a policy prescription that will place power into the hands of the people. When you have fears about your health care system, they have you right where they want you, feeling like you need them to get by in life. Going back to my time at the emergency room, I realize that public health care is a privilege, a forced privilege but a privilege nonetheless. Ultimately, I think we face dwindling service, higher taxes or a two tier system. Our system as it stands is not compatible with the freedoms we hold dear. Framing the debate in a fashion that puts emphasis on moral imperatives or human rights sounds righteous, and it’s a seductive method. Unfortunately, the ideal must transform into the real and once that happens, the problems of service, equalization of coverage, funding and principles in freedom all come to the forefront. It’s not that easy.
