Is Healthcare a Right?

Many people have made the argument that healthcare is a right not a privilege. There are many problems with using this political slogan as a serious argument.  The first is that unless the two options of treating healthcare as either a right or a privilege exhaust the possible ways of treating healthcare, this is an example of the bifurcation fallacy. Since there are other ways of treating healthcare this is the case.

However, to say that the argument is fallacious is not the same as establishing that healthcare should not be treated as a right.  In order to do that, we must produce a valid argument against that sort of treatment.

The first step should be to clarify what a right is.  A right is a claim that an individual has against every other member of society and indeed against even a majority of those members.  For example in our society there is a well recognized right to free speech.  Even if a majority of people disapprove of what you are saying, this doesn't make it acceptable for any individual to prevent you from saying it.  Not even the government may do so acting on their behalf.

Now we can look into what it would mean for individuals to have a right to healthcare.  This would mean that any individual would have a claim on assets that would be necessary to provide him or her with the healthcare that he or she needed.  These assets must be provided to the individual at taxpayer expense even if a majority of voters disapprove.  This is provision in the law must be in addition to equality under the law.  Few people would argue that the government would be justified in setting up a healthcare system that would exclude some minority, or one that could be used to punish political dissent by withholding service.  What we are talking about with a right to healthcare is a right that people would not otherwise enjoy.

I argue that there is no reason to support a literal right to healthcare.  The only reason such a right would have any effect is if a majority disapproved of the provision of healthcare under a certain circumstance.  What kind of political system would we need in order to extract resources from every member of our society in order to provide healthcare even though a majority of voters disapproved of this?  Unlike the right to free speech, freedom of the press and similar provisions, a right to healthcare is inherently costly.

I suspect that many people were not actually suggesting that the wishes of the majority should be contravened in order to provide healthcare, but that is the only thing that a right to healthcare can mean.  If a majority of people want to provide healthcare, then we don't need such a right in order to provide it.  It is only in the case where a majority of voters decided not to provide it that such a right could possibly be violated.  Hence it is only in the case where the public disapproves that such a right has meaning.

I suspect that people are using the language of rights in order to marshal support for the government provision of healthcare.  When we see a right violated we are inclined to rush in to support the individual who's rights have been trampled on.  For example, many people supported the Supreme Courts decision that the Westboro Baptist Church's protests at funerals were constitutionally protected speech, even though they disapproved of the speech itself.  People who use the rhetoric of a right to healthcare are trying to get people who would otherwise oppose this expansion of government to support it on the basis of a supposed right that individuals have to healthcare.  I don't think this is either legitimate or terribly effective.