The swine flu, or H1N1 virus, has been declared a “pandemic” by the World Health Organization. In response to fears of the flu spreading, many government health agencies have stepped up to the plate and are now rushing vaccines into the marketplace. European health officials have declared that lives potentially lost through largely untested vaccines are worth the gamble in order to save lives. The Greek government recently announced its intentions to vaccinate all 12 million of its citizens, “without any exception.”

The swine flu outbreak of 1976 is not often brought up in the current H1N1 discussion. In February 1976 one soldier, Private David Lewis, died from and several of his peers fell ill to the swine flu in Fort Nix, New Jersey. Due to the strength and the quickness with which the flu could potentially spread, President Gerald Ford ordered nationwide vaccinations, which started up in October 1976. However, soon after receiving the vaccinations, roughly 500 people were developing a disease paralyzing the nerves, Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). Private Lewis ended up being the only individual to die directly from the swine flu itself, while more than 25 people died because of the vaccinations. After more than 40 million people received vaccinations, the $137 million program was canceled on December 16.

The reasoning behind massive mandatory vaccinations, particularly today (as well as 30 years ago) with the swine flu, is to avoid another disaster such as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which killed millions of individuals around the world. This despite recent research suggests that the swine and Spanish flu may not be as connected as previously thought, primarily because the swine flu is spread through pigs, while the Spanish flu is passed from birds to humans.

I am not downplaying the positive effects that some vaccines have had on humanity. I am simply questioning the principle of compulsory vaccinations, coerced medical care, and forceful quarantines supposedly justified by government-declared health emergencies. These have been the topics of increased discussion of the WHO and many government health agencies around the world, and certainly are not to be dismissed as mere crackpot theories.

Mandatory vaccinations limit the soundness and viability of vaccinations. If a certain vaccination is proven to prevent disease, increase strength of health, and protect the body, clearly it would not require force to be implemented in society. The very idea of mandatory vaccinations implies that you must impose on someone’s beliefs, preferences, and reasoning.

If an individual decides to reject a vaccination that the majority of people are receiving, how does his decision impact others? If the vaccinations are effective and voluntarily received by many people, the individual is only placing himself at risk. If people feel they are exposing themselves to too great of a risk by not taking a vaccine, they are free by all means to get a vaccine. Individuals receive or decline vaccinations at their own risk.

As far as the swine flu situation goes, people will not need a government mandate or forceful coercion to take a vaccine if they feel a major potential risk is looming. In the case of 1976 it was government officials who determined that the swine flu might turn into a disastrous situation, and in turn imposed their frights on millions of Americans. The actions the government carried out were primarily based on the information and beliefs of unelected officials who felt it was worth the risk to potentially sacrifice lives in the name of protecting people against a potential disaster.

The idea that if someone doesn’t take a vaccine they are therefore a potential risk to other individuals makes no sense whatsoever. If one group of people chooses to get vaccinated while another group declines the opportunity, the vaccinated group is supposed to be protected against that particular disease. They are not put in danger by those who decided to opt out of the vaccine. They are also taking the chance that they could possibly grow more ill from the injection. In the event of a true pandemic you can bet that if proven vaccines are available, the majority of people will choose to get vaccinated; you do not need government officials determining the weight of different risks. It is the responsibility and free choice of the individual, plain and simple.

The Merriam-Webster definition of freedom is “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” Can anyone seriously defend the potential policies of mandatory vaccinations and still make the argument that we live in a free country? Freedom does not suddenly become a doormat to new and abusive government powers in times of potential health problems as declared by government; last I checked the Constitution, anyway.

It is illogical to expect government to constitutionally take on the job of keeping people healthy. It is the responsibility of the individual, not government, to decide what food to eat, which medications are most helpful, and whether or not to receive vaccines. The federal government has already attempted to regulate and control substances in this way through the Drug War, and it has not lessened drug use or violence. Whenever government has tried to protect individuals from themselves it has always failed and led to far worse consequences.

The reality is that it cannot be up to government officials and politicians to decide when or if a vaccination will truly protect the individual. Who can push away the possibility that politicians aren’t trying to score a victory for the pharmaceutical companies providing the vaccines? The potential for deadly abuse of mandatory vaccinations alone proves the insanity of giving the president, Congress, or a government agency the power to mandate medications and vaccinations.

No person or group, no matter how powerful, has the moral or legal authority to force or deny substances like vaccines and drugs. The 5th Amendment mandates that no one is to “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” while the 4th Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Whether it’s an individual or government holding a gun to your head, mandatory vaccinations are an unequivocal infringement on free will, choice, and individual discretion.

Mandatory vaccinations destroy individual liberty, individual sovereignty, and any concept of freedom. If the vaccinations the government feels must be forced on the entire country are as fantastic as officials claim, force and coercion certainly would not be necessary to convince people of their benefits.

Vaccinations must treated and managed like any other good or service: through individual choice, discretion, responsibility, and freedom. It is the only method that guarantees the absolute control is where it belongs: with the individual.

In recent years profits have gotten a bad name from many people and politicians. Profits are said to take advantage of others, encourage greed, among a variety of other allegations. These concerns can be legitimate but often miss a crucial point.

Profit represents the reward for taking a risk. You wouldn’t start a business if you knew you weren’t going to make more than you would spend creating that business, would you? However, if you can increase your income more than your expenditures through that business, you’ll feel much more inclined to continue with the operation. Obviously, people cannot survive operating a business at a loss.

Profits do not come without work and risk. It is only possible to make a profit if you can offer a product or a service that people want, in an efficient manner. No matter how greedy you may be, in a free market you cannot survive without efficiently producing a product that has market demand. You cannot force people to work for you, you cannot force people to invest in your business, and you cannot force people to purchase your product. Your greed is limited to free and voluntary exchange.
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A White House blog post submitted on August 4, 2009, states that “opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, ‘facts are stubborn things’.”

It continues, “Scary chain emails and videos” are popping up on the internet, attempting to discredit President Obama’s health care positions. Because “these rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation,” the White House is asking you to send anything that seems “fishy” to flag@whitehouse.gov.

The post did not include the entire quote from President John Adams, which came from his Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials in December 1770:

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Essentially, the White House feels it knows all the facts and has all the evidence necessary for health care reform and any piece of information, whether it’s from an email or a conversation with your neighbor, you have the responsibility to inform the White House.

My first reaction to this is, How do we know who has all, none, or only some of the facts? The short answer is that we don’t know, until each individual does his or her own research on any topic. We cannot expect to gain all knowledge if we ignore some information, rely only on one outlet for information, or are prevented from knowing some information completely. It is extremely difficult for individuals to gain full understanding of any topic if they are prevented the opportunity to freely interpret and research that topic as they see fit.

The First Amendment of the Constitution specifically prohibits any abridgment of free speech and the press. The protection of free speech and a free press are the only methods that guarantee people have the opportunity to voice their opinions and seek any information that they feel to. It must be remembered that only through free speech and a free press can sound discussion prosper.

This latest action from the White House does not promote free speech, sound discussion, and logical arguments.  Much to the contrary, it promotes speech that only the government deems fit and factual, attempts to regulate and monitor neighborly discussions if necessary, and tries to discredit any argument that doesn’t agree with the President’s health care proposals.

This is an appropriate time to bring up the Merriam-Webster definition of censorship:

To examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.

The White House, and many politicians, know that the President’s proposals for health care reform have lost popularity relatively quickly. Individuals grouping together to protest at the town hall meetings pushing forward the President’s health care agenda have received a large share of the blame. They have been called violent, they have been called mobs, they have been called racist (racism… health care… it makes sense!), they have even been labeled as paid pawns for the insurance corporations. All these individuals are doing is exercising their Natural and protected right to peacefully assemble, and apparently the government cannot stand it (is there any greater testimony to free speech and its protections under the First Amendment?).

None of the blame the White House has placed on individuals, businesses, political parties, and “angry mobs” has done the trick in reducing opposition. They are now attempting to enter the first stage of censorship: to examine in order to suppress. The White House actually believes that the reason for the decreasing popularity of the President’s health care reform is because of “fishy” emails and casual conversations. This sheer ignorance of what causes legislation to become unpopular makes me wonder if these so-called angry, racist, violent, and paid protesters have some valid points.

If the White House and many Democrat representatives really believe that a hugely complicated, expensive, and sweeping change of health care can be brought down through a few spam emails and conversations, maybe that legislation really is worthy of increased discussion from all viewpoints, parties, and individuals; not less.

The White House fails to point out, of course, that those who want to push forward the President’s message of health care reform could just as easily spread false information or propaganda through emails, websites, and casual conversation. If you are going to attempt to censor “disinformation of health care reform,” shouldn’t you censor the non-factual information in support of the President’s plan as well? If the White House knows all the facts, they ought to discredit all individuals attempting to spread false information. Who are we as people to send an email or start a discussion that the White House doesn’t verify as factually correct?

A debate won through censorship can never be called a true victory. For it is won not through principle and sound argument, but manipulation and deceit. With freedom of speech comes freedom of thought, neither is fully effective or meaningful without the other. “Free speech” is not here to protect speech that the government appreciates or needs for an agenda. It is to specifically prohibit government from infringing on the right to free speech, unless it is through the due process of law as protected and mandated in the 4th and 5th Amendments. The White House simply has no superiority, legally or morally, over what people ought to freely write, think, or discuss.

As former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura said in 2008, it is not popular speech that needs protecting, but unpopular speech. Speech that people and the government appreciate comes with the natural protection of popularity. Even if the words coming from some people and outlets are not factually correct as the White House claims, it does not give government a shred of authority to monitor, suppress, or censor speech or thought. (The First Amendment does not protect free speech “so long as all words are factually correct according to the Federal Government.”) The ultimate censorship does not come from a government official, the White House, or Congress, but through the individual’s right to choose what to read, listen to, and discuss.

If the President’s health care reform plan is everything that politicians claim it to be, truth will be the victor. No amount of emails and discussions could result in its lasting demise. If it is what they say it is, free and voluntary discussion and thought should be a boon, not a danger, in creating a respectable, worthwhile, and helpful health care reform bill. It comes down to the fact that the White House today is attempting to censor and discredit all those who oppose the President’s health care proposals.

The censorship and citizen informant program does not strengthen the White House’s message, it discredits it. For if the facts they claim to hold maintain the truth they claim to represent; freedom of speech, thought, and discussion is the absolute last thing they need to worry about.

“Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself.  It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” - Potter Stewart

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” – Albert Einstein

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” – John F. Kennedy

A recent New York Times article by David Leonhardt brings up an interesting proposal to pay for government health care:

The numbers show there is only one sure way out of the problem, and, after months of roundabout discussion, that solution has re-emerged: It’s a tax on health care.

If Congress taxes health care, the revenue has a chance of rising with health spending. A health tax will also create an incentive for workers and businesses to slow the growth of health spending — thus reducing the amount of taxes needed to pay the nation’s health bill.

In other words, politicians want to control the health care industry with a special government plan that will cost trillions of dollars in a several-year period. Government doesn’t have money, considering that the nation is broke and suffering a harsh recession. But with this brilliant new proposal, Congress can provide health care service and pay for it by taxing health care spending.

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this one. If cutting wasteful spending is as simple as slapping a tax on an item, why not throw a tax on the escalating government spending, where there is far more waste than any business or service in the marketplace?

More from the Times article:

Because health care — unlike food, clothing and most other things — isn’t taxed, it’s effectively on sale. And when something is on sale, people often buy more of it than they need.

In the case of health care, they buy — or their employer buys for them — insurance plans that don’t make much of an effort to control costs. Rather than putting pressure on hospitals to root out administrative waste, the plans cover the cost of that waste.

Taxing rising spending is not going to lower the price of health care without a cost. To compensate for the lost income businesses will either cut or limit their service or increase prices. If government really knew a method of lowering prices while increasing productivity, I highly doubt anyone would be against that type of plan. It’s funny, though, when I think of the yearning for lower prices and higher productivity, I can’t help but think of some other economic system that provides this exact service without the supposed wisdom of government officials: the free market.

Certainly there is a good deal of waste and over-use in the health care industry today. But the last thing that is causing this phenomena is the lack of a tax on health care spending. The direct problem for rising health care costs is the fact that today the individual carries little control over his or her’s medical plan. Through HMOs and other programs encouraged and forced by government, we have effectively put other people in charge of our health care.

The more that people rely on third-parties to manage and pay for their health care (whether it’s their employer, insurance businesses, or government), the less they will be financially attached to their medical plans. If they aren’t paying for their health care directly, they have little incentive to take cost into account. It isn’t because we haven’t slapped a tax on medical spending that we have the problem of rising spending, it’s because the individual is losing the direct control over medical spending and therefore the incentive to limit medical spending and costs as much as possible. When someone else is paying the bill, who is really going to hold back and not grab as much of a service as possible?

Another problem stems from the idea that health insurance needs to pay for every little medical cost. This again takes more of the incentive away to control spending and cost. If you buy flood insurance, you do not expect it to pay for covering the damage of a muddy lawn after a drizzle of rain. Insurance is a simple tool to measure and pay for risk, not common procedures.

Consider what caused the price of cell phones to drop quickly while the products continually improved. The first cell phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, released in 1984, weighed two pounds, had a half-hour battery life, and cost $3,995. Today, you can purchase a cell phone for twenty or thirty dollars with far more capabilities than the DynaTAC. Was it a tax on cell phone spending that encouraged businesses to increase efficiency, lower costs, and create cheaper and better products, or was it competition, a relatively unregulated market, and the power of the consumer?

Imagine if in 1984 the government forced employers to offer cell phones to their employees and placed “insurance” businesses in charge of paying the simple fees. When you take the power away from the individual and hand it to a third party, people greatly lose the incentive to find the best product at the cheapest price. They lose the incentive to find value, and the ability and options to find value become greatly limited because of the government intervention. This is why people will often overuse the medical system in Canada, which leads to rationed medical care, limited medical services, and long waiting periods for simple procedures.

The solution to our health care problem does not lie in a collective system such as socialism. We have had a sort of collective corporatism insurance and few people are pleased with it. It really does not matter which third party is paying for health care; so long as individuals don’t have the financial control over their medical care, inefficiency will abound. Employer-provided medical coverage, corporate insurance plans, and socialized medicine all have a basic flaw: they can’t fully serve the individual because it is not the individual who is in full control.

Individuals need more, not less, control over their medical care, and this is what many people and politicians fail to recognize today. More government involvement through subsidies, taxes, and programs will not solve a thing in the long run. To save health care, it must be the individual -  not the employer or the corporate workers or the government officials – who carries the power of choice and the incentive to reward value in the marketplace.