Socialized Medicine Is Not a Fundamental Right

There is certainly a need for health care reform. But let's be clear: there is no such thing as a fundamental human right to socialized medicine.

(By Fr. Jonathan Morris, Fox News) - President Obama and his political team -- starring David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel, and Robert Gibbs -- will begin a full court press with the American public today to sell their $1 trillion dollar plan to drastically increase government involvement in, and control over, the nation's health care industry. The president will do interviews today with medical reporters/commentators from NBC News , ABC News, and CBS News -- all broadcast networks and great cheerleaders of socialized medicine.

Here's what to watch out for: a mucking up of ethical waters by the inference that the fundamental human right to basic health care is equivalent to a universal "right" to socialized medicine. In the coming days the president and his advisers will speak passionately, and often, about the estimated 46 million Americans without health care insurance. And they will do so in moralistic terms, haranguing Americans to feel outrage at the thought of so many poor, fellow citizens deprived of their rights.

And if this were true, if 46 million Americans had no access to basic health care, the outrage would be justified and political action would be morally compulsory. But it's not true.