Flashback: Paul vs. Sanders: You Can’t Have ‘Free’ Health Care Without ‘Slavery’

Paul: 'Right to health care' is slavery (Politico) 

A hearing of the Senate HELP Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging looked at emergency room use and took an odd turn Wednesday when Sen. Rand Paul compared the “right to health care” to slavery.

“With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care you have to realize what that implies. I am a physician. You have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. You are going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants, the nurses. … You are basically saying you believe in slavery,” said Paul (R-Ky.), who is an ophthalmologist.

Paul, who is the subcommittee ranking member, said he believed that the notion of expanding federally funded community health centers to ensure that everyone had a “right” to care was not constitutional and would enslave doctors. Doctors, he said, should care for patients because of their own moral code.