"Healthcare is a good, not a right"

Ron Paul's weekly column opens with an important distinction between "goods" and rights."

Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming “rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.

First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.

What I think is the most disturbing about Obama's nationalize healthcare plan is that it is moving us towards the most inefficient possible why to distribute the "good" of healthcare.

A friend once said to me, "Healthcare shouldn't be about efficiency." I didn't know how to respond at the time. Now I'd say, "Of course it is. If it's not efficient, then less people get cared for. Isn't the whole point of the reform is that more people should have access to healthcare?"

Read Dr. Paul's entire column.

Resolved

Jonathan Edwards wrote 71 resolutions to read each week he was 19. To imagine that someone at 19 would be set such a high standard for this life humbles me.

Here are a few that challenged me. (I wanted to copy and paste whole list, but if you're truly interested in being challenged, you can click the link.)

6. Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.

15. Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational beings.

17. Resolved, that I will live so, as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.

67. Resolved, after afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what am I the better for them, and what I might have got by them.

Reality Check: Do I take full advantage what I've been given?

Imagine that you're curious about the Christian faith, but you can't get any answers in a language you understand from an official source.

Imagine that if you do go to church, the pastor preaches sermons in a language you don't understand.

Imagine that any Bible you put your hands on is in language you can't read.

Imagine that when you have questions about the Bible or God, you have no written resources available to help you.

Imagine that when you do come across a book that might help, you would have to read it by candle light because most of your day light hours are spent doing all that's necessary for survival.

Imagine that you live in a different century where this is describes your life, as many people have...

During a conversation with my Dad last night, it struck me: I can read the Bible. I thought to myself, what would it be like to go to Mass in Latin, when most Bibles were only translated into Latin, and there was no internet for me to click--Matthew Henry's commentary for the entire Bible at my finger tips?

Do I really take full advantage of the great gifts God has given our generation to understand the Christian faith?