Is Health Care a Right?
A left wing socialist journalist wrote an editorial
criticizing President Bush for not doing enough to make sure everyone in the
USA has health insurance. It was published in the Houston Chronicle on 23
Jan, 2007. You can read his screed here
- http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012207F.shtml
I wrote a letter to the Houston Chronicle about this, which
they published on 24 Jan! You can read my very reasoned reply below or here:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4497088.html
PAUL Krugman's column in the Jan. 23 Chronicle,
" 'Gold-plated' indifference as Bush talks of uninsured," showed how
mainstream the socialist view has become: the central government has
responsibility for everything deemed "necessary."
I beg Krugman to find authority in the Constitution
for the federal government to spend a dollar on social programs — it isn't
there, it exists only in the minds of socialists who think they know better
than the Founders of this country.
We could learn from former Congressman Davey
Crockett, who served from 1827 to 1836. On one occasion, a bill was taken up to
appropriate money for the widow of a distinguished naval officer. After several
speeches in favor of the bill, Crockett spoke, "Mr. Speaker, we must not
permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead
us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an
argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as
an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it." The bill failed.
Krugman cried out, not for relief for war widows,
but health insurance for all, and it's the same issue: tax dollars for
conscience. The Constitution has not been amended for this purpose. Congress
still has no authority to spend our money this way, but most Americans think it
is the most patriotic act the government can perform. This is a sad commentary
on our country, all the more so for an educated man such as Krugman.
STUART L. BROGDEN