I was detained somewhat getting to the meeting hosted by Health Care for All North Carolina in Asheville. As I was leaving my prior engagement somebody wanted to warn me about the Trilateral Commission and the CFR. Ron Paul has all their names. I tried to explain that I didn’t have time for conspiracy theories, but since the gentleman was so much my senior, it was difficult to be intentionally disrespectful. Twice I explained that at that moment Representative Susan Fisher was trying to socialize medicine just a few miles away, and that posed a more clear and present danger.

The event was hosted by Church Women United and the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Fisher was the invited speaker. The group, spurred on by founder Bill Brooks, wants all North Carolinians to have access to affordable healthcare. A tool fundamental to realizing their goal is House Bill 901, proposing an amendment to the state constitution that would make health care a fundamental human right, chucking everything I thought I knew about natural rights philosophy out the window.

I usually prefer to honor groups’ freedom to assemble and stay away from meetings where I would only make trouble. The ad in the paper didn’t say a nominal fee of $12 would be charged, and I certainly wasn’t going to support the effort after I found out. I was, however, sympathetic to the fact that healthcare is not affordable for about sixteen intertwined reasons, and some unraveling of the problems would have been appreciated. The people, as they always are, were all so sweet and kind.

I was welcomed to sit in one of the breakout groups. We had a list of statements the group was supposed to evaluate. The first asserted that the provider and the consumer of health care should make the decisions about the level of service provided. I opened my big yap first to say something was missing. I later spoke to Brooks about this when he was kind enough to grant me an interview. The provider had a selfish interest to sell as much healthcare as possible, the consumer had a selfish interest to get as much healthcare as possible, and the third-party taxpayer was stuck with the bill. I said it sounded like a recipe for spiraling out of control. As luck would have it, I said that just as it was time for him to go back to directing the group.

Earlier, Brooks explained that he got interested in universal healthcare when he heard the story of his dad, who served as chairman of the board of Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, being asked what the hospital was going to do about indigents who couldn’t pay. Somebody asked why Christians were even debating the issue. That got Brooks thinking about the moral, ethical, and spiritual aspects of healthcare. I said I agreed that we should be compassionate and care for all in need, but I didn’t think government should be in the healthcare business. Brooks responded that the government wouldn’t be doing the diagnosis and prescription. In not so many words, he conveyed that doctors would only be de facto government employees. He then said most people come around to his point of view when he explains that they will be paying $5500 in taxes total, rather than $4500 in taxes and $3500 in insurance premiums as they do now. To open my mind to opposing viewpoints, I tried to suspend my disbelief and suppose if there was a road to serfdom this wasn’t it.

Brooks began the entire discussion by saying he wasn’t going to go into details, as everybody knew the problems. Most of the flak the proposal receives comes from misinformation. After all, Luxembourg, a democracy with a free market and socialized medicine, has much lower healthcare costs (per capita?) than the US. At one point in the group discussion, I went off. All the statements on which we were voting were ambiguous so that everybody could read whatever they wanted to into them. Tons of details and glitches were not being addressed. I said, “Communism even looks good on paper,” and had no credibility after that.

In his closing remarks, Brooks shared that one group that has been under-represented as an enthusiastic supporter of the bill is businessmen. Brooks encouraged members of the audience to talk the plan up with that demographic.