Opinion: Healthcare is Not a Right

I had to pop downtown this morning to get some cash from my bank’s ATM, and spied a bumper sticker on an SUV in the parking lot. It read, “Healthcare is a right, not a privilege.”

No, it isn’t.

Those who make this claim betray an incredible ignorance of rights.

Rights are a moral claim against everyone, denoting freedom of action in a social setting. They come from our nature, as individual volitional beings who rely on thought and action to obtain what is needed for our survival and psychological well-being.

In a free society, individual rights are respected to the extent that each person, regardless of race, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. is allowed to act freely in pursuit of his own happiness – to gain and/or keep in his life those values that he believes, rightly or wrongly, will make his world a better, safer place.

If, absent an agent backed by the full force of government, you would have to ask for something – and accept a refusal – then it’s probably not a right.

For example, consider a right we take for granted: free speech. The right to speak freely means you can say whatever you like, in a public space or in the privacy of your own home, so long as you’re not violating the equal rights of others. That doesn’t mean the rest of us should be compelled to give you a podium, microphone...or even an audience.

(The “You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre” argument is valid, but not for the reason usually cited. To falsely claim that such a fire exists means violating the right of contract between the theatre-goers and the theatre’s owner.)

You’re freely reading this blog, and I’m freely writing it. Neither action requires or places a burden on others – at least, not one that hasn’t been freely accepted.

Some say, “You can always go somewhere else if you don’t like it!”

Really?

So black people should have just “gone back to Africa” – rather than demand respect under the law? A woman may be lucky enough that she can run away from a would-be rapist, but that does not legitimize the attack.

This twisted defense of legal thuggery is particularly galling coming from people who bleat hopelessly when it is suggested that they just find a better job rather than demand that a higher hourly wage be imposed by law.

You can say, “Healthcare is a right” – that is truly a right. Spouting foolishness is as protected as any other form of peaceful speech.

But when you start forcing others to provide you with healthcare, or subsidize your healthcare, you’ve now left the moral high ground far behind and launched headlong into the realm of those who would pervert the nature of rights to make others cough up whatever goodies you are unwilling or unable to work or trade for yourself, or receive from charity.

There can be no “right” to parasitism.

Funnily, those who see rights everywhere – typically in the co-option of the property or services of others – can be very uncomfortable with the idea of others exercising their actual rights. The right to keep all of your income, or donate to a political candidate, for instance, or provide for your own retirement, gets short shrift from many of the same people who, like temper tantrum throwing children, get hopping mad when it is suggested that they look after themselves – like adults. The Second Amendment states that I have the right to keep and bear arms, which means I can buy a gun, or be given one voluntarily. If healthcare is a right, then the government should give me a gun too – and at your expense. How’s that sound?

Nor are rights determined by the majority. Were this so, slave-owners had a “right” to those they held in bondage, and whites had a “right” to segregated facilities in the Jim Crow South; Nazis were just exercising their “right” to send “racial inferiors” to death camps. Our entire Bill of Rights is a refutation of majoritarianism.

Might may compel compliance, but it doesn’t make something right.

The only legitimate use of force is in defense of rights. My only obligation is to respect your rights, not your wants.

Healthcare is certainly important, especially as we grow older. That doesn’t mean your bad decision making, or even your bad luck, become a blank check on my or anyone else’s life. Feel free to contract freely for the services you desire. That is your right.

If healthcare is a right, then everything is a right – which destroys the entire concept of rights. Perhaps that’s the real goal?