Nationalized Medicine: A War of All Against All

Taking one more step in the direction of statism, the Senate Finance Committee Passes Healthcare Reform Bill. Too many of the rebuttals focus on the astronomical cost, or the detrimental effect it will have on the affordability of private health insurance, or the expected decline in quality of care. But the most fundamental problem is a moral one. There is no right to the life, labor or property of an other human being.

from "Morality Ends Where a Gun Begins"

by Robert Tracinski, TIA Daily, 10/6/09

Serious moral thinking about public policy requires, first and foremost, a consideration of what happens when we replace persuasion with coercion as the guiding power in human affairs.It requires that we begin by grasping the role of liberty and individual rights in keeping a civilized society civilized.

The basic moral principle that limits the actions of government is the fact that other people's lives and livelihoods are not yours to dispose of. If you want someone else to provide you with a good or service, you have to be willing to offer something of value in return, in a voluntary trade. And if you can't afford to pay for what you need, then you have to ask politely for charity, knowing that the other person has a right to refuse. He has that right because his time and his money are his.

To act otherwise—and acting otherwise is the whole essence of the case for further government intrusion—is to turn a civilized society into an uncivilized war of all against all.When the basic principle of government control is stated in individual terms—I need something, so I'm going to use force to take it from you—it sounds like what it is: a criminal act. So most people try to dress it up by stating it in collective terms. "We as a people decide what social benefits will be provided, what taxes people have to pay, and what terms insurance companies will be allowed to operate under." But this is actually worse. What this means is: the group has a right to dispose of the life, liberty, and property of the individual. That's a criminal act, too. The sacrifice of the individual to the collective is the basic atrocity committed by some of history's worst criminal regimes.