Healthcare is NOT a Right

Rights are basic freedoms to which all humans are entitled. No right can be considered valid if the only way it can be delivered is by coercing another, by force, to provide it. You have a right to free speech for example and you don’t have to steal anything from anyone to provide that right. It stands on its own. Healthcare, on the other hand, has to be given to you and to be given it has to be taken from someone who either has the means of providing it or for paying for it.

If you argue that healthcare is a right then you have to explain to me why you or the government should be able to steal my property or my labor to provide for your right. If it’s ok to steal these things from me then why not make it a right to have food? Food is far more important than healthcare and water is more important than food. Should these be rights? Should we say that not only is food a right that good food, excellent food, or top of the line gourmet food should be a right? This is what many advocate with respect to healthcare which as indicated above is far less important to our health and survival than is healthcare. Should farmers be required to give away the product of their work for free or for whatever price the government decides is fair? What if they refuse? What if they decide farming isn’t for them as it just isn’t worth it for what they get. What if the government decided that in order to support a massive department of agriculture that hundreds of pages of paperwork would have to be completed by farmers before they could be allowed to sell food to anyone. Farming isn’t that profitable as it is but I suspect you’d find fewer and fewer people wanting to be farmers and the overall cost of food would increase.

I will not argue that a government should be able to decide that it’s in the interest of that government to provide for some level of healthcare but healthcare will never be a right and no one should ever be forced at gunpoint to provide healthcare to anyone.