One way that leftists have managed to keep alive their dead, defeated, bankrupting theories on issues like so-called health care is by perverting the definition of very basic terms.

The word “right” is one of the most glaring examples of a definition that’s been distorted by the intellectual house-of-horrors mirror that is leftist theory.

Image: CATO Institute

Every American has the “right” to health care they argue.

They’re right. Every American does have a right to health care. In fact, they have that “right” right now. They have the right to buy insurance. They have the right to not buy insurance. They have the right to pay out of pocket. They have the right get a second opinion. They have the right to rub a little dirt on it and suck it up. They have a right to help out  a friend in need.

What they don’t have is the “right” to health care in the perverted leftist sense of the word.

A “right,” in the traditional American lexicon laid out by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, is something that exists by virtue of our humanity. It is “inalienable” and we are endowed with these rights by our creator. No government or institution has the power to take away these rights. You exist, therefore these rights exist.

In the leftist sense of the word, though, a “right” is something very different. In fact, it’s not a “right” at all: it’s a handout provided to you by government, often at exorbitant costs to society.

“I have the ‘right’ to health care!” the leftists demand angrily. “Therefore, the government must provide it for me!”

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From Canada’s National Post:

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States.

Deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale confirmed the treatment at a news conference Tuesday, but would not reveal the location of the operation or how it would be paid for.

“He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done,” said Ms. Dunderdale, who will become acting premier while Mr. Williams is away for three to 12 weeks.

“In consultation with his own doctors, he’s decided to go that route.”

Mr. Williams’ decision to leave Canada for the surgery has raised eyebrows over his apparent shunning of Canada’s health-care system.

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Many advocates of health-care reform are admirers of Canada’s state-run, no-opt-out, single-payer system. Indeed, in 2003, President Barack Obama voiced enthusiasm for such a health-care program.

Proponents of Canadian-style health care should meet Cheryl Baxter, a Canadian citizen who waited years for hip-replacement surgery, only to be told that her operation would not happen any time soon. Instead of waiting, Baxter did what an increasing number of Canadians are doing: She flew to a clinic in the United States, paid out of pocket, and had a life-altering surgery in a matter of weeks rather than years.

Baxter’s experience doesn’t just throw damning light on Canadian health care. The sort of clinic she went to in Oklahoma suggests a different way of delivering health care in the United States, too: A simple fee-for-service
model in which providers openly advertise their prices, service, and reputation. Rather than a frustrating, complicated mess of intermediaries such as employers and insurance companies, U.S. health-care reformers should think about bringing medicine into line with the same dynamics that help deliver great service at great prices throughout most other parts of the economy.

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As the Senate Finance Committee completed its work on a bill that would greatly expand the government’s role in health care – requiring nearly everyone to buy insurance, and designing that insurance through subsidies and mandates – President Obama is trying to rally doctors to his side. At an event last week at the Rose Garden, phalanxed by doctors wearing their white coats (as well as some that White House staffers had handed out), Obama declared, “nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do.”

Dr. Benjamin Carson receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Yet one of the nation’s top surgeons, with credibility and acclaim the world over for the pioneering surgeries he has and his personal story of overcoming hardship, recently ripped the dominant health care legislation before Congress in a critique similar to that of conservatives and libertarians. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Md., and recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, criticized in a recent interview the approach of the current bills for their mandate, creation of a “public option,” and lack of malpractice liability reform. 

“My biggest problem is I feel it’s going in the wrong direction,” Carson told reporters at TV station WLOS in Asheville, N.C. (Video here.)“It’s giving us more government and less autonomy. And I think we should be going in exactly the opposite direction. We should be having more autonomy and less government. And that is the kind of thing that brings the prices down.”  (more…)