Watkins and Brook: Repudiate The Morality Of Need
By Paul Hsieh, MD @ 12:05 AM   
The December 28, 2009 Investor's Business Daily carried this piece by Don Watkins and Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights entitled, "Memo To Foes Of Health Reform: Repudiate The Morality Of Need".
Here is an excerpt:...The reason we continue to move toward socialized medicine is that everyone -- including the opponents of socialized medicine -- grants its basic moral premise: that need generates an entitlement.
So long as that principle goes unchallenged, government intervention in medicine will continue growing, as each new pressure group asserts its need and lobbies for its entitlement, until finally the government takes responsibility for fulfilling everyone's medical needs by socializing the health care system outright. They also note:...The only way to effectively oppose socialized health care is to reject the morality of need in favor of a genuinely American alternative. According to the American ideal, men are not their brother's keeper -- we are independent individuals with inalienable rights to support our own lives and happiness by our own efforts.
That means taking responsibility for your own medical needs, just as you take responsibility for your grocery shopping and car payments. It means no one can claim that his need entitles him to your time, effort, or wealth.
Where is the willingness to defend this ideal by saying, "Your health care is your responsibility -- and if you truly cannot afford the care you need, then you must ask for private charity -- not pick your neighbor's pocket to pay for it"? (Read the full text of "Memo To Foes Of Health Reform: Repudiate The Morality Of Need".)
Watkins and Brook also note that the Republicans are failing to make this kind of principled moral opposition to the Democrats' plan, instead relying predominantly on more derivative economic arguments.
America will likely soon learn the consequences of this failure.Labels: OpEd
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