Though Kennedy's intentions are admirable, health care cannot be guaranteed as a right. Still, Americans have a moral obligation to help one another get the health care they need.
Everyone needs to care for their health to be happy and productive, and no humane person wants to see anyone suffer from poor health. It is thus appealing to think of health care as a right. It is also misleading. Health care is not and cannot be a right, at least not one that is guaranteed.
In American tradition, natural rights are God-given attributes inherent in all people at birth, whether government recognizes them or not. All people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or the right to act freely in their own best interest. These natural rights do not guarantee a long life, abundant wealth or enduring happiness, just the right to pursue them.
There is no natural right to health care. Not all people are born with good health or access to a needed vaccine, chemotherapy treatment or angioplasty. Government cannot promise anyone good health or access to medical care or any good or service. It can only protect the right to seek to obtain them.
Government could presumably invent a man-made right to anything - child care, lawn care or hair care - but could not necessarily guarantee it. Resources are limited. What if there are just not enough good babysitters, hair-care products or pediatricians to go around?
To guarantee a right to health care, government would either have to cough up gigantic financial incentives to convince doctors, nurses, therapists and the like to provide particular goods and services or else force them to do it. The latter would border on involuntary servitude and violate the natural rights of health-care providers.
People have the right to choose their field of labor and what goods and services they produce. Though government cannot legitimately guarantee people the medical care they need, we have a responsibility and a way to help them get it.
Utahns are a charitable people. We give more money and volunteer more time to charitable causes than most people in the United States. We recognize that respect for human dignity and common decency demands that those who have assist those who have not. Utahns do not need a government mandate or contrived right to health care to spur us to action.
Many Utah nonprofits, businesses and private citizens already provide free or low-cost medical services to the needy every day. And yet we can, and must, do much more. Charity care can help provide care to those who cannot afford medical care, including many of the 250,000 or so Utahns who lack health insurance.
Authentic charity care - individuals and private institutions voluntarily giving of their time and resources to provide medical care for those who need it - means giving people the opportunity and privilege to choose to help the needy directly.
It contrasts with the illusion of charity created by inefficient government programs that remove personal responsibility from the giver and receiver of care. Forcing people to help the needy through taxation, government mandates and a faceless, impersonal bureaucracy is not charity.
All Utahns have the right to purchase the best medical care we can for our own health and also the moral responsibility and capacity to help those who cannot help themselves. By working together with genuine charity, Utah citizens and institutions can choose to help all Utahns be healthier, happier and more productive.
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* MATTHEW C. PICCOLO is a policy analyst at the Sutherland Institute, a conservative public-policy think tank.
