Live or let die

The Left-wing blogs are outraged over the Tea Party debate during which some members of the audience seemed to advocate death for an uninsured person who gets critically ill suddenly. Ron Paul, uber-Libertarian to whom the original hypothetical question was addressed, was slightly more diplomatic, suggesting that the patient's care be paid for by the local church.

Needless to say, as one of the Left-wing blogs, I was outraged by the two or three sociopaths who deemed themselves arbiters of life and death for their fellow man. But it also got me thinking about what our Founding Fathers might have suggested for the same situation.

Of course health insurance didn't exist back in 1776. Medicine was so relatively primative that most illnesses you either survived or not without the dubious help of a doctor. Because of the general condition of medicine at the time the Constitution was written, the idea of the government helping to defray medical costs and maintaining the health of its population was ludicrous.

At the same time, one could argue that the Declaration of Independence's most famous statement: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." includes the right to live, which in turn could be further translated to the right medical care should your life be in danger.

There have always been charity hospitals, though. And I imagine even the staunchly Federalist John Adams would have thought that sufficient. The difficulty in trying to guess what anyone from a different time period would think (beyond the inability to guess what anyone else, no matter how contemporary would think) is that the values and customs as well as knowledge were so drastically different. In the end it's impossible to know, but I'd like to think that none of them would have stood up and shouted YEAH! when asked if society should allow the man to die.

I also wonder if the people in that debate audience who thought death was a good solution to the critically ill's lack of insurance feel the same way about fetuses' lack of insurance. I'm guessing not.