Roy Cordato has written an insightful piece on Obamacare at the Carolina Journal, demonstrating that the “right” to health care granted by Obamacare is really a “legal obligation” to purchase health care insurance:
For decades pundits have been debating whether people have a “right” to health care. The notion of rights that is typically invoked is distinct from the question of whether people have a right to enter the market for health care services and engage in exchange activity in order to obtain health care.
“Rights,” in the view of the president and those who believe in a specific “right to health care,” imply a guarantee that the right holder can obtain health care services either without charge or at prices that are “affordable,” hence the official title of Obamacare: the Affordable Care Act. (See this previous “Economics & Environment Update” newsletter for a more detailed discussion of different conceptions of rights.)
This notion of rights therefore implies an obligation on the part of others. There are two possibilities. The first, typically not invoked, is that health care providers have an obligation either to provide their services for free or to adjust the prices of their services according to the incomes of their clients. There is a reason why this kind of obligation is not advocated by anyone, although Medicaid reimbursement schemes do attempt to invoke this approach to a limited extent. It is a form of price control that would dramatically curtail the supply of heath care services, as occurs in the Medicaid system.
The other, and more typical, scenario is that the obligation to sustain this right falls on taxpayers. That is, the cost of health care to the health care rights holder is made affordable through taxpayer subsidies. This is the single-payer model in which the government, within limits defined by the government, picks up everyone’s health care tab.
So how does Obamacre fit into this picture? The fact is, it doesn’t. The centerpiece of Obamacare is not a universal right to health care but a universal obligation to obtain health insurance. Because of this, it does not recognize or grant rights of any kind but denies them while mischaracterizing obligations as rights.
What distinguishes all rights from obligations is the ability to refuse to exercise the right. If someone is not legally allowed to refrain from engaging in an activity, then there is no right, only an obligation.
Allegedly Obamacare guarantees a right to access health care by guaranteeing a right to obtain health insurance, either by purchasing a plan through the Obamacare exchanges, through an employer plan, or, if income-qualified, through Medicaid. But since it is illegal to refuse to exercise this so-called right, it is not a right at all but a legal obligation.
It cannot be both. The right to say no is an implication of the right to say yes.
In examining Obamacare’s so-called right to health insurance, the farce of using the language of rights can be exposed easily. This point is made quite obvious with the individual mandate, which imposes a fine on any person who does not purchase a government-approved health insurance policy. Obamacare guarantees a right to health insurance only in the way that the draft guarantees a right to serve in the military.
