What are some responses for this? Most of the people with whom I’ve talked to about this, that consider it a right, can’t explain how it’s a right. They don’t know any kind of theory of rights or ecnomics, so philosophical explanations are pretty much useless.
Maybe you should ask them what they do when rights conflict - like if the right to health care trumps the right to private property or self ownership. When they respond that you should just do whatever makes people better off, AHA! Their theory of rights is predicated on utilitarianism, which is not a theory of rights.
They need to learn what rights are.
We can’t trick people into becoming libertarians, they actually have to become it.
Of course it’s a right.
I agree with them fully.
Everyone has the right to healthcare.
Now, the problem is : I tell them they are confusing right with entitlement. You have the right to healthcare, you are just not entitled to it for free.
I also use the 2nd amendment as an analogy. You have the right to bear arms, but you are not entitled to a gun for free.
I think a lot of them confused the right to healthcare with a right to good health, and then a right to good health as a right to life as paid for by everyone else. Which is why the same people will say you have a right to food/water at the expense of everyone else.
They just take everything for granted.
"Of course it’s a right.
I agree with them fully."
I would say they have a right to voluntary exchange, therefore they can seek healthcare or not – or candy bars or spare tires or green thumbtacks.
Calling a product or service a right just seems weird to me.
From here.
Yeah. I don’t know why anyone would ever say a that you have a right to a product. I always explain to people, for example, that the right to the pursuit of happiness is much different than the right to happiness.
One’s health is most assuredly a right, and the exercise this right is completely up to the individual. However, health care is merely a service provided by the market. Further, the imposition of a government health care system is in complete violation of the rights of other individuals. If somebody wishes to call something a right, then it must necessarily follow that such right must not infringe upon other rights held by individuals. Since government health care does in fact infringe upon the rights of others, then it most certainly cannot be called a right.
The two most easily understood examples are with regard to private property. The first is that in order to provide the service of health care to all within a particular country that it must necessarily include the confiscation of property from some individuals in order to direct it to the benefit of other individuals. It is obvious where the violation of property rights lies in this example. The other example is that if the government mandates that all health care providers must provide their services without regard to compensation. While it is true that many providers already do this of their own accord, it does not follow that compelling providers of health services to do this with the threat of force is the same thing. This is again a violation of property rights, because the owner of such property and services is no longer in the position to direct the use of his property.
I generally tell people that rights don’t exist when confronted with something like this. This seems to shock them when put so bluntly. You have a right to yourself and your property, and that’s it, as far as I see. From there you can expand into private ownership of property when more topics come up (freedom of communication, comes back to property ownership, etc., or into health care that it’s merely a service provided by individuals, and that you don’t have a right to someone elses labor).
What does the word “right” mean?
The Soviet constitution was seen as the most progressive constitution by many in the past. It guaranteed all kinds of rights for its people, one of them being health care. What most people do not see, or pretend to not see where the duty clauses that have to go with each of these “rights”, so while they promised all these nice things they were then also forced to work for all these nice free things.
The question of rights seems to crop up periodically on this forum, and the confusion and misunderstanding never seems to get any better, I find it quite depressing. An accurate understanding of rights and liberties is fundamental to an understanding of libertarianism and politcal philosophy in general.
Read Anthony de Jasay, pretty polly please with sugar on top. You owe it to yourself.
Property is not a right, property is a liberty. Unless someone is obligated to provide you with property in some kind of contract, in which case you can legtimately say that you have a property right.
Healthcare is a right ONLY IF someone somewhere has an obligation to provide you with healthcare.
Any definition of RIGHT that does not involve an obligation as its counterpart is incoherent babble.
Agree agree agree. Right means contractual obligations; all else is rhetorical nonsense. No harm in using it as a metaphor or idiom, but it has no place in serious discussions of law or morality except as part of a covenant.
“Read Anthony de Jasay, pretty polly please with sugar on top. You owe it to yourself.”
I don’t know if any of this was directed at me but I will check him out for sure.
I agree with you all true what was said
They can declare goods and services ‘rights’ all they want, but declaring something a right is obviously pointless. If society doesn’t have the capacity to produce it people still won’t have it. Commodities don’t appear out of thin air because we declared them a right. Conversely, if society has the capacity to produce something it’s redundant to declare it a right, because people have it anyways. Declaring something a right actually reduces peoples access to it, because declaring something a right usually calls for government involvement in the economy, which reduces societies productivity.
I don’t see why it’s so important to classify something as a ‘right,’ since it’s almost irrefutable that healthcare is still an essential service.
The real issue is when people don’t feel that all essential services should be covered by the state. But with something as general and universal as healthcare, I can’t find any grounds to agree upon.
When people claim to have a right to healthcare, they mean they’re entitled to (a certain amount of) healthcare.
That being said, what standard of “essential service” are you using? And how much healthcare is essential, exactly?
The other problem with this is when people claim health care is “essential” why stop there? We all have to eat to live right? So let’s socialize all food production. We all need shelter so we don’t freeze/melt outside, so let’s socialize real estate! It seems like people cherry-pick this single service, claim it’s essential then call it a “right” but when you keep applying that logic elsewhere it all breaks apart and makes no sense