Hill: "Health Care Is a Constitutional Right"

"What we ultimately do remains to be seen."
This is what the people of the 9th Congressional District elected Baron Hill to represent them for, to tell us that the Constitution makes health care a right for all Americans.

"I think access to health care is a constitutional right," Hill said, adding that it's not clear what form a revised system would take.

Not a human right, but a constitutional right. Yes, somewhere in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the other amendments, the framers wrote a provision requiring that the government buy people like you and me Tylenol and even Viagra.

They probably had the foresight to ensure that the government would pay for invasive surgeries too. Why, I bet James Madison foresaw the need for the government to pay for organ transplants. The Founding Fathers were visionaries, after all.

It's not enough for Baron Hill to propose a constitutional amendment that would make health care a right. No, that would be too difficult and might actually require him to write or sponsor legislation. After all, actually writing legislation is something that Baron hasn't managed to do yet (as of this posting, go here and click sponsored legislation).

He has found lots of opportunities to add his name to the legislative work of others--he's done it eleven times, which is like signing your name to homework done by someone else--but he can't be bothered to write anything himself. He's too busy noticing how many people come to visit him at law firms.

Anyway, the right to health care is in there somewhere, inside the Constitution and its amendments, and we just needed to elect Baron Hill for him to find it for us. He's not just a Congressman. He's a constitutional scholar without peer. He'll show us where the constitutional right to health care is located, because I sure couldn't find it when I went to look.

Back during the debates (question #3), Hill got preachy about this very subject. Eric Schansberg, the Libertarian, took him to task over it, differentiating between economic rights and individual rights. The right to freedom of speech costs those not speaking nothing, except maybe the effort to listen or walk away. A "right to health care" will cost everyone a lot of money.

At least in the debate Hill avoided the rather interesting stretch that health care was a constitutional right. Now, having been elected, he can dispense with that and go ahead and start interpreting the constitution for us.

At his event for the elderly, I wonder if Baron trumpeted his achievement for his constituents in passing legislation to have Medicare negotiate drug prices.

This would be another product of the Democratic House that hasn't yet passed the Senate or been signed by the President into law. Yet it wouldn't surprise me for Baron to have taken credit for it back here at home anyway; he seems to have done it before.

More genius from Mr. Hill, the sort of thing we elected him for:

"What we ultimately do remains to be seen," he said.

No? Really? I would never have guessed.

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been. If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure. Our future lies ahead. *end sarcasm*

LATER EDIT: The Courier expanded on Hill's visit in a larger column in its Tuesday edition; it doesn't make him look any less foolish.