Health Care and Healthcare: Immoral and Unconstitutional

By Deane Waldman, MD MBA. February 15, 2021

For decades, political pundits and the mass media have bombarded the public with a drumbeat of misinformation on healthcare. By the power of constant repetition and with dissent suppressed, these two falsehoods have become commonly accepted wisdom:

1.Health care is a fundamental human right.
2.Washington will solve our healthcare crisis.

Health care MUST BE a right! After all, everyone says it, from policy wonks and mass media to Washingtonpoliticians and religious leaders, even Pope Francis!

Healthcare is, after all, a federal responsibility. If Washington wont fix healthcare, who will?

As long as these false facts form the basis of our policy discussion and planning, health care will be unavailable, and healthcare will be impossibly expensive.
Objective analysis of the above wisdom shows that a right to health care is immoral, and federal control of healthcare is unconstitutional.

Definition of terms

Healthcare can be one word or two. As two words, health care refers to an intimate, legally-protected, one-to-one, fiduciary relationship between patient and physician.

As one word, healthcare is the system, a massive, complex, exceedingly expensive, and dollar-inefficient industry that employs tens of millions of Americans and consumes nearly 20 percent of U.S. GDP.

The dictionary defines right as a noun, a moral or legal entitlement to have something or to act in a certain way. One does not have to qualify for a right or pay for it. People have access to their rights whenever and wherever they choose. For examples, consider the rights to free speech, religious liberty, and assembly (Amendment I); keep and bear arms (II); security in your home (IV); and speedy, public trial (VI).

Immoral

The fiduciary connection we call health care is a commercial, contractual (implicit or explicit) relationship between a patient and a physician. In the market for health care, the patient is the buyer, and physician-provider is the seller of services. Health care two words is the only market in which there is a third-party decision maker and payer.

A physicians medical (health) care of a patient is a service, his or her work product. If health care service is a patients basic human right then the physician must provide whatever service the patient wants, when and where the patient wants it, for no payment. As noted, rights are free and accessible whenever and wherever a person wants.

What is the name for the condition where one person must do another persons bidding at all times with no limits or restrictions and be paid nothing? Slavery.
The right to health care turns physicians and other care-givers into slaves. Slavery is immoral. Ergo, a right to health care is immoral.

Unconstitutional

The Declaration of Independence was much more than a declaration of war. It established the independence of the new nation from Great Britain. It also defined the independence of individuals from control by a government or a ruling class. In 1776, that class was the British aristocracy. Todays ruling class is the professional political class in Washington, sometimes called pejoratively, the swamp. Americans successfully rebelled against tyranny in 1776 but seem to be returning to that condition in the twenty-first century.

The U.S. Constitution was specific in its defense of individual freedom by placing limits on central control or government tyranny. Article I, Section 8 lists 18 powers assigned to Congress such as lay and collect taxes establish a uniform rule of Naturalization establish post offices and post roads constitute tribunals inferior to the supreme court and fourteen other powers most of which deal with the military, for protection of the new nation.

The first ten Amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, is a list of specific individual freedoms that must be protected from governmental tyranny: free speech, assembly, religion, security in your home, trial by jury, and rule of law.

The Tenth Amendment was a catchall to make crystal clear and unambiguous that there are limits on federal government authority. The powers not delegated to the United States [federal government] by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Healthcare is not listed in Article I, Section 8 as a power enumerated to the federal government. Thus, healthcare is prohibited to Washington. Ergo, federal control of healthcare is unconstitutional.

Conclusion

The American public has been gaslighted. We have been manipulated to accept two Big Lies. It is time to unmask them. There is no right to health care. Such a right will lead to a great immorality: slavery. Washingtons power over our healthcare system is unconstitutional. Control of healthcare should be restored to the states respectively, or to the people.