Throughout the health care reform debate, our leaders had the opportunity to implement meaningful change in an imperfect system. Instead, they multiplied existing flaws by vastly increasing the entitlement nature of government health care.

“How,” senators cried, “can a wealthy, industrial society have members who do not enjoy the benefits of modern health care insurance?” But that’s the wrong question. Poverty is the natural state of human existence. Each of us comes into the world naked and cold, with dominion over nothing more than ambition and intellect, which we may put to the task of building our lives.

That is, until government guarantees us myriad entitlements that can be had, essentially, through the act of being born.

In Europe, a baby comes out of the womb, slaps the obstetrician and demands immediate access to infant-fortified government cheese puree and a TV on which to watch the government-created educational program “Proletariat Street,” broadcast on the public cable network.

OK, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. In Greece, a country on the brink of financial meltdown, 28-year-old hairdressers take to the streets in support of their “right” to retire at age 50 and collect pensions paid out of the state coffer. In France, where laid-off workers have a tendency to kidnap their bosses, the right to a job is as culturally embedded as baguettes and menage a trois.

We Yanks have mostly resisted such notions of entitlement, but today, those on the left are celebrating a bill that, as one columnist wrote, “enshrines the principle that all Americans have the right to health care.”

The problem is that such a right is essentially a claim over someone else’s property: your doctor’s time and training, your hospital’s equipment and supplies and your insurer’s or the taxpayer’s money.

Conceptually then, demanding that health care be provided to you is as absurd as demanding that a local builder construct a house in order to fulfill your right to a home or demanding that Apple give you a new iPad so that you can exercise your right to not pay attention in class.

In contrast, the rights given to us by the Constitution are freedoms: They provide us with a framework in which to live, not the means to do so. We are guaranteed pursuit of happiness, not happiness.

Author Stephen Crane’s most famous poem illuminates the difference:

“A man said to the universe:

‘Sir, I exist!’

‘However,’ replied the universe,

‘The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.’”

If Crane were writing today, man’s pompous declaration wouldn’t be humbled, because a government regulator would butt in to provide the man with government-funded food, housing and health care. Today, simply by being, we hold that society owes us a debt for the pleasure of our company.

By further changing the relationship between citizen and state, and by marching toward a single-payer system, legislators missed the boat. They asked, “Why do we have poverty?” and answered, “Because we haven’t yet provided for everyone.”

A more illuminating question, though, is, “Why do we have wealth?” Had legislators asked, the unequivocal answer would have been that wealth — quality health care included — is a product of the hard work and innovation of millions of individuals within a free-market system. With that knowledge, Congress could have enacted reforms to strengthen the health care markets.

Tort reform could save hospitals millions in medical malpractice premiums, and would keep physicians who fear high-dollar lawsuits from ordering unnecessary and costly tests. Increased use of medical savings accounts, coupled with high-deductible insurance plans, could put consumers back in charge of weighing the costs and benefits of treatment options. Both ideas could lower the overall cost of health care and, presumably, increase coverage.

Instead, we get more government, a bigger bureaucracy and an even more unsustainable mentality of entitlement.

The obligation is now law — and all you have to do to cash in is say, “I exist.”