Health care and the ailing Constitution

Here's the question I didn't get a chance to ask President Obama when he stopped by Montana recently. So far as I know, no one else has asked it of him either:

"If the federal role in health care is not enumerated in the Constitution, and it isn't, then shouldn't it be reserved to the states or the people as guaranteed by the 10th Amendment?"

The 10th Amendment, for those of you who don't already know, says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Pretty powerful stuff, if anyone followed it - but they don't.

Scour the Constitution as you will, you won't find anything regarding health care. And don't resort to the cheap politician's trick of finding an excuse to do whatever you want in the "general welfare" clause from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The "general welfare of the United States' refers to the survival and health of those very states, not the individual well-being and medical check-ups of each and every individual citizen. The specific powers of Congress are indeed quite limited, and for good reason.

If you don't believe it, then explain why the Founding Fathers went to the trouble of detailing powers of Congress such as the power to "punish piracies' and "establish post offices," but didn't put in anything about "establish rules to ensure adequate health care" for all citizens. Based on the wording of the 10th Amendment, It seems obvious that the omission was because they saw health care as a power 'reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

And if you don't believe me, then what about James Madison, himself a Founding Father, who wrote in Federalist Paper No. 41, the following:

"For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? … Nothing is more natural nor more common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars."

Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was trying to allay fears of those who foresaw a "power grab" by Congress under the pretense that the "general welfare" clause gave them unlimited powers. Not so, Madison said. "General welfare" only gives Congress the power to carry out the "enumerated powers' of Section 8, not to invent new ones.

Oh yes, and Mr. President, a followup question please:

"Do you, President Obama, believe people have a 'right' to health insurance? If so, is this an inalienable right granted by the Creator, or a provisional right granted by the president? And by the way, does the president have the 'right' to create 'rights' or not? Finally, if I have a right to buy health insurance, does that not infringe on someone else's rights? If you were an insurance company, would you want to be obligated to provide insurance whether it made sense from a financial and actuarial point of view or not?"

I am pretty sure the president DOES believe there is a right to health care and, by extension, health insurance, but I really would like to know where we got that right from, and when it was instituted. From what I can tell, this right might have been inserted into the Constitution by Karl Marx, but I still haven't been able to find a citation for that.

The funny thing is, most rights don't seem to impose on anyone else when I exercise them. If I have the right to free speech, you have the right not to listen. You don't have to give me anything, and my right does not restrict you. If on the other hand I have a right to eat anytime I want to, regardless of ability to pay, then I would be able to roll my full shopping cart out of the grocery store without stopping at the checkout line. No need to pay, because I am just exercising my right to free food.

Well, that's the kind of right we are talking about with health care.

According to President Obama, I have the right to take health care without paying for it. Doctors and insurance companies are just supposed to tough it up and give me what I want. They have the right to complain, but they don't have the right to deny me access to my free health care. After all, my "right" forces them to take care of me.

They don't even have the right to deny me insurance even though from a strictly business point of view it makes no sense for them to give me insurance. If I just found out that I have cancer and will be paying $200,000 in medical bills over the next two years, I should still be able to walk into the insurance office and sign up for insurance at a cost of $500 a month and let someone else pay the other $188,000 that will come due over the next two years. After all, I can't afford it on my own, so SOMEONE has to pay, right?

That's a sweet "right," much more lucrative than the right to vote, for instance, which still hasn't netted me much of anything except Congress and a big fat headache (or do I repeat myself?).

Now, this is where most people who oppose nationalized health care back down, because they feel funny when accused of being against sick children, or against mothers with cancer. But the argument for creation of a new right should not be based on how empathetic we are to the plight of others.

Each and every one of us can understand the pain and travail of a family that is without health care in the face of a dire emergency. I suspect we could actually come to agreement on a system of catastrophic care that could be set up as a public-interest group rather than an arm of the government, and which would allow the truly needy to benefit without paying.

But when you involve the United States government, you had better consult the United States Constitution -and if you want to guarantee a right to health care, you had better start working on getting an amendment passed, because it just isn't in there now.

And for those of you who have just stopped to read the Constitution for the first time, and are seeing just how few powers the Congress and the president really have, welcome to the incredible shrinking sovereignty of the American people. I know, we are all supposed to be happy with our Social Security and our Medicare and our Department of Education grants and our government-owned businesses like GM, but we are also supposed to follow the rules, aren't we?

Yes, I agree that Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are wonderful benefits, especially since we don't actually have to pay for them, but that doesn't change the fact that they are unconstitutional infringements, nor should it make us support unconstitutional health-care proposals in the future.

Think of it this way. You already got your checkbook snatched out of your jacket pocket, your passport taken from your right front pocket, and your loose bills taken from your left front pocket. Those represent Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. All that's left is your wallet in your back pocket. That represents guaranteed health-care. And now the pickpocket is back.

So when you feel a tug at your wallet and realize you are being swindled, are you just supposed to shut up and sigh: "Well they got everything else, so I guess they should have the wallet, too!"

That's the argument being used by fans of ever-increasing government control of people's lives, and chances are it will actually work. Too bad.

Of course, you can't stick the genie back in the bottle, and there's no use crying over spilt milk, but even so, from time to time, I think a moment of silence in honor of the republic we've lost is a fitting tribute to the forefathers whose work we have meticulously undone.

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com