On rights

[unixronin]

Keeping it short:  hugh_mannity on health care, starting with why health care is not a right.  (The capsule summary of which first point is that you do not have a right to anything that somebody else has to work to provide for you.)

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Re: I call shenanigans.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

[continued]

Likewise, suppose that my neighbor across the street is a doctor. I do not have a right to have him treat me should I become sick. He and I are, however, entirely free to come to an agreement wherein I pay him to treat me should I become sick. This is a service for pay, not a right.

Now, I have a right to ACCESS to health care. My neighbor from whom I buy firewood may not stand in the street and prevent me from going to see my neighbor the doctor. But, my neighbor the doctor is not obligated to treat me. If he does not, I am free to seek another doctor. But none of the doctors I may find is obligated to work without reward to treat me. If I wish them to treat me, it is expected that I will pay for the service.

Now, my neighbor across the street may very well handwave it and tell me, "Eh, don't worry about it." Perhaps because I helped fix the hole in his roof last winter. Perhaps because he likes me — or my daughter. Or perhaps what I needed really didn't take anything from him but a little of his time and a hot compress, and he's really not that bothered about it. But I still don't have a right to get that treatment from him for free. If he chooses not to charge me, that's his call. Anything else is still an exchange of services for pay, and that is not a right.

If every doctor in town refuses to treat me, because of, say, the color of my skin, now that's a problem. Because now I'm not just being denied treatment, I'm being denied ACCESS TO treatment. I'm not being given the opportunity to make that exchange of services for pay.


Now where things really start getting difficult is if no-one will treat me because every doctor in town knows I have no money to pay for my treatment, and my treatment is such that it's going to be expensive. It would be a good and charitable thing, particularly if my destitute state is no fault of my own, were some public-spirited individual, or perhaps some body appointed and funded by the town or by donations from the townspeople, to cover the cost of my treatment when I cannot. In the event that they do, it would certainly behoove me to repay the deed once I'm back on my feet again. And, in the spirit both of compassion and of enlightened self-interest, it would behoove me to donate a little extra into that fund when I can, so that it is there should I or my neighbor need expensive medical care and be unable to pay. But I still do not possess a RIGHT that dictates they must do so.


How's this working for you?


I didn't suggest by any means that it's the solitary criterion of a right; rather, it's a guideline for weeding out those things that are probably not rights. As a limiting criterion, I don't claim that it is exhaustive; but I believe it to be a very good rule of thumb that if someone else's labor is required to provide something that you want or need, then you do not have an inherent right to it. You are entirely free to arrange terms to receive it in return for money, goods, or another service, you may have a right not to be prevented or prohibited from making such an arrangement to obtain any such legal service, and you arguably have a right not to be charged an unfairly high price for that service while another person is charged much less (an injustice which the health-care bill passed last night does not redress), but that does not constitute a right to the service itself in the first place.

Make sense?