Health care is not and cannot be a right. Here are ten reasons why, in no particular order:
-
A right cannot impose material costs on others.
-
A right cannot be an economic good, a limited resource.
-
A right is an indivisible and unlimited concept. A right exists in exactly the proportion as human beings exist.
-
One man exercising a right cannot possibly prevent another man from exercising the same right. There cannot be a waiting list for rights.
-
Rights are inalienable. There are there when you are born, and they are there when you die. You cannot sell them or buy them, nor can they be taken from you by force, or granted by kings or governments.
-
To declare a right to something that is not a right is to immediately and forever violate this false right. This is obviously true with health care, see Cuba, the Veterans Administration, etc
. -
A rich man cannot purchase more of a right than a poor man. Jeff Bezos does not have more free speech rights than I do. Yes, he can own the Washington Post, yes he can buy a network news station if he wants to. But my right to free speech is not an obligation on others to provide me with a megaphone.
-
A right cannot vary over time or space. The right to free speech is the same today, a hundred years ago, and a hundred years from now. The “right” to health care would be the same in a poor country as a rich country, by definition violating the “rights” of some.
-
Rights can only be violated by other human beings. Imagine a remote tribe in South America with no contact with the outside world in a thousand years. They have no health care at all. Are their rights being violated? By whom?
-
To secure a right requires only that others refrain from taking certain action, not that others take positive action.
Because something is not a right, does not mean it is not important. It does not mean that family, friends, churches, and charitable organizations should not be working voluntarily to alleviate suffering in their respective spheres of influence.
You can argue health care should be a government provided benefit, but that still does not make it a right in any sense.