Is Healthcare a Right?

[supergee]

Jim Wright asks the next question.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Well, us lot here in the UK think so!

Next?

[armiphlage]

And Canada (although our dental care and pharmaceutical coverage is appalling). And the EU, and most other developed countries.

[weofodthignen]

I disagree with him, but I'd have to shoot at stuff he presumably holds very dear to explain it.

Basically, access to healthcare should be a moral obligation - for both the healthcare providers (Hippocratic oath) and the society. Not to mention that many moral obligations that societies should be expected to live up to are indispensible for their smooth functioning: societies break down if they don't forbid and punish murder and theft, provide for the housing and education and yes, healthcare of their residents, because people can't or won't contribute to a society where they have to scramble to meet basic needs, live in a constant state of terror or pain, or don't have the skills or the time to do much. And that includes those societies that deliberately stunt the potential of the half of their members who are female, or other percentages. True cutting off the nose to spite the face.

But a moral obligation is not the same thing as a right. Nobody has the right to anything except under some law. We all die eventually, we could all die tomorrow. The vast majority of us will get sick; some of us are born that way; some sicknesses medical science hasn't found a cure for. Confusing a right with what decent societies should provide is political chicanery, but of course it's an article of faith in the US that we have "inalienable rights".

He's an idealistic, principled man and a good writer. But he's up a gumtree on this one.