Earlier this month, Dr. Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky and 2016 presidential candidate, somehow managed to compare single-payer healthcare to slavery.
He said,
With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.
Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.
I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.
Realizing how completely and utterly insane Paul’s rationale was, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — also a 2016 presidential candidate — put him in his place.
Sanders asked a doctor on the panel, who works at a federally-funded health care facility, if she felt like a slave.
“I love my job; I chose to work there,” she responded. “I do not feel like a slave.”
Sanders then asked if everyone in America had access to healthcare, to which the answer was: no, of course not.
Watch the full video of Sanders and Paul.
