The Right to Medical Care

The idea of a right to medical care is so blithely tossed around that most people never take time to ponder the rather serious consequences that would flow from it. It is a classic pseudo-right. A pseudo-right is any claim expressed in rights language that would expand the power of the state at the expense of genuine rights...

Let’s start with something basic: for a right to be genuine, it has to be capable of being exercised without anyone’s affirmative cooperation. The full exercise of my right of self-ownership requires you to do nothing except refrain from killing or assaulting me. The full exercise of my property rights requires you to do nothing except refrain from taking what is mine. You have no positive, enforceable obligations to me, apart from any you accept through contract...

Here is the crux of the issue. The right to medical care must mean—no exceptions—the power of government, in principle, to determine who gets what. It may not exercise that power immediately. But given the economics of the matter, it will, sooner or later. I submit that this has nothing to do with rights and everything to do with control, literally, of people’s lives...

read the entire essay