Dems on Health Care: You Can’t Be Trusted With Your Own Life

Pelosi and Reid are sickening. But this post got me thinking about the constitutionality of a government paid for and run health care system. The Constitution sets up the basic structure of our government and limits the power of the central government by enumerating only what the government should be responsible for. One, of course, is that the government has the power to defend us from foreign invaders.Of course the founders knew nothing of health care, insurance and almost nothing about disease, so naturally they wouldn't even think about such things.

I often wonder if I could go back about 230 years and catch a few of our founders before they went in to one of the Continental Congresses prior to the ratification of the Constituton. I would congratulate them on the idea that government must protect us against invaders, but then inform them that there will be another invader that kills more Americans than war and it is one they've never heard about.I would tell them about the invader of disease and that there is a system set up that does not allow equal access for all Americans to fight this invader. Some 35 million now have no access or limited access to this system and they are suffering and dying and not able to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

I would like you guys to consider and discuss if the role of this government is to make sure all Americans have an equal right to fight this most vicious of invasions that harms and kills so many.

It is a discussion I would just like to hear.

Actually the Founders knew something of health care and disease. Benjamin Rush was a doctor, after all. They didn't know as much as we know today, but they didn't need to. There are other principles that govern this issue than the mere science of medicine.

They understood the proper role of government, and they understood that overly powerful and overly intrusive government were a recipe for tyranny and oppression. They launched the revolution to rid themselves of overly powerful and intrusive government.

That is why they specifically enumerated the scope and authority of the federal government to the few things we see in Article 1 Section 8 and set them to be exercised, as Madison said, principally on external objects.

They also understood that government has no proper role in charity. This is best and most properly handled by individuals and private organizations, as it was until about 70 years ago.

A government health care system is nothing but a government system of charity--forced "charity." It forces individuals to surrender some of their property under the threat of fines and/or incarceration in order to give that property to someone else. If I came to your house, took your wallet against your will, removed say 30% of it and said I was going to give it to some guys on the other side of town, that would be theft. It is no less theft when government does it, and it is also a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The founders did leave a mechanism for changes to the constitution (they were wise enough to realize that while their founding principles should be sufficient to ensure our freedom and prosperity for eons to come, that certain particulars would likely need to be changed or clarified over time). The amendment process-defined in the Constitution itself--is the proper method of making changes to the Constitution when we want to do things that are not clearly authorized.

That would be the proper way to go if you really believe we are smarter than God and smarter than the founders (i.e. that government should handle charity, and that powerful, intrusive government is not a boa constrictor to our freedom), and would be the proper route for President Obama et al.

Any other way is not only folly, but illegal.

Well actually Benjamin Rush essentially knew very little to almost nothing about disease and had basically no cures in the 1700's. He nor any of the founders could conceive of a 'healthcare system'. The concept was unknown. Their idea of charity was obvious and simple, but we don't know for sure that if they knew that millions of lives could be saved or cured of disease through a government plan, like Medicare, that they would still call it charity.

It is a conversation I would love to have with both Dr. Rush and Mr. Jefferson and here it from their lips that healthcare from the government is charity, rather than take someones word today that they would definitely see it that way.

Well, shoot. Had a great response, only to see a connection hiccup blast it all to etherspace.

Here's a condensed version from memory:

You missed the point I was trying to make with Dr. Rush, but hopefully it will come to you later. Suffice to say that while in 200 years someone might say that Dr. Rutledge knew almost nothing about diseases and basically no cures in the 21st Century, I don't think it would be fair to claim that you know nothing of health care.

But as to what the founders considered to be charity and what they thought of charity, the statements they made and statements made by many statesmen until roughly the time of FDR's unprecedented assault on the Constitution make it very clear:

- I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. -- Benjamin Franklin

- It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see? -- Thomas Jefferson

- A wise and frugal government…shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. – Thomas Jefferson

- To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. — Thomas Jefferson

- Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. – Thomas Jefferson

- The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.” — John Adams

- [Congressional jurisdiction of power] is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.” – James Madison

- The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.” – James Madison

- With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. – James Madison

- I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. – James Madison

- Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. – James Madison

- We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. — Congressman Davy Crockett

- I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. -- President Grover Cleveland vetoing a bill for charity relief / (18 Congressional Record 1875 [1877])

- I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded. -- President Franklin Pierce's 1854 veto of a measure to help the mentally ill

Any remaining doubt is removed by the clear limitations of Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution (government health care is not found in the enumerated powers) and the Tenth Amendment.

Bob Sorry you lost your connection, but your memory doesn't appear yet to be affected. Believe you me, I am worried about the efficacy and cost of another government healthcare program. I also understand that the founders did not believe charity and subsidies should be under government domain. But there is no way they could have invisioned a type of healthcare system that is so vast, can save millions of lives, but is getting so advanced and costly that many Americans can't afford to save the lives of their own families.

I just don't know if they saw now what is going on, that they would equate healthcare and the lives it can and does save, with the public charity or subsidy for the poor that they were reffering to. I would love to hear what Dr. Rush would say about that distinction were he alive today

I think they understood quite well the impact that good medicine and health care can make in saving lives, and could dream of a day when it was even more widespread than in their day so that it could do greater good.

But it remains something that should remain in the realm of the private sector. And as I've said before, if you adamantly believe we can make something work that has failed every time it's been tried before, then the proper way to begin is through a constitutional amendment authorizing the federal government to do it.

Until then, it's illegal.