Hillarysworld

Jacob Sullum has a must-read piece on the folly of the Democrats' argument that government subsidized health care is somehow a fundamental human right. Sullum says this oft-repeated statement "reveals a radical assault on the traditional American understanding of rights."

Along those same lines, in remarks announcing the health care deal on Saturday Chris Dodd cited FDR's famous Four Freedoms speech to produce the mind-bending argument that a massive government takeover of the health care system actually represents an expansion of liberty in that it frees us from "one of the great fears Americans have lived with for generations."

"So today we stand ready to pass a bill into law that finally makes access to quality health care a right for every American,  not a privilege for a fortunate few in our country.

This month sixty-nine years ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlined four freedoms: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.

And one of the great fears that Americans have lived with for generations is the fear that their child, their spouse, a loved one, they themselves will be hit with an illness for which they cannot receive treatment because they can't afford it, they can't see a doctor because they can't afford it.

This bill does not guarantee you'll never get sick. It doesn't guarantee you're not going to die. All we're trying to do is to guarantee that if you are a fellow citizen of ours and you are struck with illness, or a loved one is, that you'll never again have that fear that you'll end up losing your home, your job, your retirement, your life savings, because you've been afflicted by an illness through no fault of your own that we are dealing with the freedom - that rational freedom that all Americans have that one day they will suffer the dignity- or indignity - of not being able to afford the care for their family and loved ones."

Dodd goes on to say that as "a nation founded on freedom and sustained by unimaginable prosperity, this bill is long overdue and critically important."

Where to start? Set aside the fact that Dodd shamelessly hijacks FDR's "freedom from fear" from its original context - the anxiety felt in January 1941 by the global war being waged by the totalitarian Axis powers - and grafts it onto a domestic policy issue concerning a relatively small percentage of the U.S. population.

Set aside also Dodd's use of the phrase "through no fault of your own," designed to evoke sympathy and cast individuals as victims. (If I develop lung cancer after 20 years of smoking, is my illnesses "no fault of my own" and therefore the costs of my treatment should be subsidized by my fellow taxpayers?)

It's troubling to watch Dodd celebrate a massive nanny-state solution to health care by suggesting it somehow expands the American public's freedoms and liberties when in fact many of the provisions of the legislation do just the opposite. What about freeing people from the fear that medical care will have to be rationed under this plan? Or freeing them from the fear that they may not be able to visit the doctor of their choice? Or freeing them from the fear the government will levy a fine against them and possibly throw them in jail if they do not go out and buy health insurance they may neither want nor need?

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