A Universal Right to Healthcare?
By Jay Richards
September 8, 2009, 9:59 am
Behind the current debates about “healthcare reform” often lurks the assumption that there is a universal “right” to healthcare. A number of partisan organizations have invoked such a right, but several religious organizations have done so as well. (For a brief survey of religious orgs that have become lobbyists for ObamaCare, see Rev. Robert Sirico’s recent article in THE AMERICAN.)
In my casual conversations with fellow Christians, it’s clear that this assumption has become very widespread, and is often invoked to short-circuit any serious discussion of the proposals currently floating around in Congress. So it needs to be examined.
Jordan Ballor raised the issue over at the Acton Institute Powerblog a few days ago. His question is a good place to start. He asks, what does it even mean to say that we have a right to healthcare?
It’s very odd to assert that healthcare, at least as practiced in its modern form (with X-ray machines and flu shots) is a right, at least in the sense that it is something that the human person qua person has a claim upon. If that’s the case, then all those millions of people who lived before the advent of the CAT scan were all the while having their rights ‘denied’ them (whether by God, fate, cosmic chance, or oppressive regimes bent upon keeping us from advancing medical technologies). It would also follow that all of those living today without access to these advanced technologies, simply by basis of their geographical and cultural location, are having their rights similarly denied.
Good points. Frankly, I suspect that the “rhetorical meaning” of the claim that I have a right to healthcare is this: the federal government should force my rich neighbor to pay for my healthcare. And I’ll stay suspicious until someone spells out both what the right to healthcare is, and what that right is supposed to entail. There’s a lot to be said on this question, of course, and I plan to return to it several times over the next few weeks.
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