We Stand FIRM
FIRM Home
Blog Home
Recent Comments
RSS Feed
Twitter: WeStandFIRM

Contributors
Lin Zinser
Ari Armstrong
Diana Hsieh
Paul Hsieh
E-mail all the bloggers

Blogroll
Principles in Practice
Capitalism Magazine
Patient Power
Medpolitics
Concierge Medicine MD
ReasonPharm
Health Care BS
Free Market Cure
KevinMD
John Goodman
Junkfood Science
Covert Rationing
NCPA Digest
Socialized Medicine
State House Call
Big Gov Health
WSJ Health Blog
Medical Progress Today
Derek Lowe
AFCM
Free Colorado
WASH
Heal Spiel
Health Policy Action Center
Lucidicus Project

Articles/Essays
"Health Care Is Not A Right"
"Moral Health Care vs. 'Universal Health Care'"
"Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong For America"
"Universal Healthcare and the Waistline Police"
"The Right Vision of Health Care"
"FAQ on Free Market Health Insurance"

FIRM Debates Universal Healthcare on Opposing Views


Archives
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
 Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Hsieh LTE in The Economist
By Paul Hsieh, MD @ 12:05 AM PermaLink

The October 14, 2008 edition of The Economist magazine has posted my LTE on health care, written in response to their article on health care in the US presidential race, "Running For Cover" from two weeks ago.

(It did not appear in the printed edition, only in the online edition):
Running for cover, October 4th

SIR - Governments should not guarantee health care as a "right" ("Running for cover", special briefing on the US election, October 4th). Rights are freedoms of actions (such as the right to free speech), not automatic claims on goods and services that must be produced by others.

Individuals are legitimately entitled to services such as health care that they purchase with their own money, are promised by prior contractual agreements, or are given to them via voluntary charity.

Otherwise, government programs to guarantee health care as a "right" must necessarily violate someone's actual rights - either the rights of those compelled to provide medical care or the rights of those compelled to pay for it. Such programs then become just another form of state-sanctioned slavery or theft.

Dr Paul Hsieh
Co-founder
Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine
Sedalia, Colorado

Labels:

E-mail Paul Hsieh, MD / PermaLink / Comments / Trackbacks / BlogThis