Health Care and Guns – What Do They Have in Common?

" As the presidential debates have progressed, we’ve frequently heard a theme about health care -- how health care is a right. As in, by virtue of being born, you have a right to health care.

Let’s look at the rights we do have in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights has quite a list. The Second Amendment, for instance, provides the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and that right shall not be infringed.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it suggest that the federal government has to pay for you to enjoy such a right. Imagine that I wanted to purchase a beautiful revolver that cost $1,200. I reach into my pocket and I am shy by $1,100. Should I go to Congress and demand that it pay for the revolver? I could say it is my right and the fact I cannot afford it suggests I am being denied my right to bear arms as protected in the Second Amendment.

I suspect both Democrats and Republicans would tell me that it is not the obligation of the federal government to pay for one to enjoy such a right. And I agree with them.

So, how about health care? Even assuming health care was a protected right under the Constitution, this does not suggest that the government has an obligation to pay for you to enjoy that right. As with gun ownership, affordability is a different concept from the right itself.

Many people too often confuse the word “right” with “entitlement” payments to enjoy such a right."

  

 [American Thinker]