Some of the candidates seeking the presidency in 2020 are making the claim that health care (or health insurance) is a basic human right. I think this is not only demagogic but utterly wrong. Here's why:
If everyone has a right to have health care provided for them then why do we not also have a right to have a home, food, transportation, clothing, etc. provided for us? All of these are just as important as health care to our well-being, but if we maintain that people have a right to these things that implies that others have an obligation to provide them.
We may, as compassionate people, choose to provide such necessities for others, but if so, it's an act of personal or corporate charity, not an obligation imposed on us by others.
If we do think of it as an obligation then the recipient need feel no gratitude, nor is the donor being virtuous or compassionate if all he's doing is meeting a state-imposed requirement.
I have a friend who made a truly wonderful choice a few years ago to donate a kidney to enable someone to live, and what made that decision so marvelous is precisely that he didn't have a duty or an obligation to do it. It was completely gratuitous.
If, however, he had been coerced by the state to provide the organ then compassion would've been no part of his act. There would've been no more virtue in it than there is in paying one's taxes. Likewise, though I'm sure the recipient of the kidney was extremely grateful for my friend's sacrifice, if the recipient believed that the donor had a duty to make that sacrifice, gratitude would've been out of place.
Parenthetically, that's a major problem with our welfare system, it stifles both compassion and gratitude by making support of the needy something to which they feel entitled.
In any case, if people have a right to health care, do people who are in need of an organ have a right to be given that organ? If so, doesn't that mean that others have an obligation to provide their organs to them, at least if, like kidneys, they have more than they need? If others have a right to our money to subsidize their health care why would they not have a right to our organs, especially those organs of which we have a surplus?
Another difficulty is that a "right" to health care is not like other rights that are intrinsic to our being human - rights like the right to life, liberty, etc. Those rights impose no duties upon others beyond obligating them to refrain from impeding us in our exercise of the right (within reasonable limits, of course). A right to health care, however, imposes an obligation on other people to provide it.
Suppose I live an irresponsible lifestyle that causes me to develop diabetes with all its concomitant health complications. Then others, essentially, have a duty to subsidize my irresponsible lifestyle by providing insurance for me against those complications.
In my opinion, my fellow citizens should be no more required to pay for my irresponsible lifestyle choices than they should be required to pay my grocery bill or mortgage. They may choose to do so, of course, but it would be an act of grace, not of duty.
Suppose, too, that society can't afford to pay for health care for everyone and can no longer insure it without bankrupting itself. What then are the reasonable limits on one's right to health care? If no money was available to fund it we wouldn't claim that individuals' rights were being denied because their health care was no longer being subsidized, but then health care would be a basic human right only if our nation could afford it.
At what point, then, do we decide that providing health care for others is no longer affordable? Surely, at some point the right to keep one's property overrides another person's right to have health care. If we deny that then we're saying that we must provide health care coverage even if it means confiscating everyone else's property in order to pay for it, or if it means forcing medical professionals to provide care for free.
Health care or insurance is like owning a house. We all have the right to own a house - no one can legally prevent us from purchasing one - but we don't have the right to demand that others buy the house for us no matter how badly we might need it. If we can't afford housing then people may wish to provide shelter for us, but we don't have the right to demand it of them.
Understand, this is not an argument against single-payer or any of the health care plans that'll eventually be discussed if and when the Democrats ever get over their infatuation with impeachment. We may as a society comprised of good and generous people decide we want to provide health coverage for everyone, to the extent that a wise, affordable program can be crafted.
What I've written above is an argument, however, against the assertion that anyone has an inherent human right to such coverage and a right to demand that we pay for that coverage.
