As the nation dithers over the Affordable Care Act and its ill-fated replacement proposals, the question of whether people have a “right” to health care begs consideration. We know that Sen. Bernie Sanders believes the answer is “yes,” and that House Speaker Paul Ryan believes the answer is “no.”
To determine who is correct, we first must understand what a “right” is.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines it as “a power, privilege, faculty, or demand, inherent in one person and incident upon another.” So any discussion of rights must begin with the acknowledgment that they correlate with duties on the part of others. They are “inherent in one person and incident upon another.” My right to own property correlates with your duty to avoid trespassing upon it. My right to free speech triggers the government’s duty to refrain from restricting it.
Generally speaking, the more basic or fundamental the right, the less onerous the corresponding duty upon others. Thus we observe that the fundamental rights bestowed upon every human being by the Creator – natural rights – are in the nature of liberties, imposing upon others only the duty of non-interference. My freedom to worship, for instance, requires nothing of others but that they allow me to exercise it.
This is one reason we know that health care is not a natural right. Health care is not a form of liberty, but rather a service that requires the labor of another person. I have no natural right to demand that service from those who can provide it, because they are free people with their own natural rights.
Of course, natural rights are not the only rights we enjoy in a civilized society. Other rights, often referred to as “civil rights,” are vested in us by our Constitution. These include the right to a criminal trial by jury and the right to equal protection of the law. These civil rights impose duties upon the government that we collectively agree to sustain and support in the interest of maintaining a just and humane society. Obviously, our Constitution does not provide anyone with a right to health care.
Now when sufficient portions of society agree, we can create or recognize additional rights by statute, or even by constitutional amendment. (Note that under our Constitution, courts were never empowered to create or recognize new rights, but rather to apply those that are codified). But the creation of new “rights” must never be undertaken lightly, because, again, all rights correspond with duties. We must always consider who will bear those duties – and whether it is just to impose them.
This is the context in which we find the current debate over a “right” to health care. The question is not so much whether there is a right to health care, but rather whether we should create one. Careful consideration of the colossal duty that such a right would impose upon others should give us great pause in designating health care as a “right.”
It is one thing for the government to collect a modest tax from all citizens to fund legitimate government functions. At the state or local level, these may include providing a safety net for those who are genuinely unable to work to provide for their own basic needs. But to classify health care as a “right” is to imply that none of us needs to earn it, that it is something we are all owed.
This is problematic because government doesn’t generate its own money – and doctors are not slaves. So who should bear the duty of funding health care for able-bodied adults? We must recognize that any scheme of redistributing the fruit of some citizens’ labor to others involves an erosion of the fundamental right of productive citizens to enjoy the fruits of their own labor – a far more basic, natural right than the “right” to health care.
And here is one final aspect of this issue to consider. Every day, people receive lots of things without having a right to them. Some of us earn goods and services, but others receive them as gifts. This also means that every day, many Americans give of their own bounty not because they have a legal duty to do so, but because they are generous and kind.
In our desire to see basic human needs met, we must not ignore the proper role of simple charity – and its merits over the legal coercion that corresponds with the problematic conferral of “rights” to complex services like health care.