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| Avik Roy is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of the Forbes blog The Apothecary. He has stated he is an "outside adviser to the Romney campaign on health care issues |
Many moons ago, I served a term as chairman of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, a parliamentary debating society. On March 26, the Union invited me back to keynote a debate on the topic, “Resolved, That Health Care is a Right.” What follows is an edited excerpt of my remarks, in which I argue that health care is indeed a right—but not in the way that most progressives think.
Thank you, Madame President.
The reason I’m here is to explain to the members of this House why health care is, indeed, a right. Let me start by telling the story of Deamonte Driver.
Deamonte lived on the wrong side of the tracks, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C. He was raised by a single mother. He spent his childhood in and out of homeless shelters. He was a black kid on welfare.
Deamonte died at age twelve. But Deamonte died, not in a drive-by shooting, or in a drug deal gone bad. Deamonte died of a toothache.
