Health care is not a legitimate right
In his Saturday letter complaining about U.S. Sen. Dean Heller’s support of lowering taxes, Ranon Aguilar writes, “Health care is a right, not a privilege.” While this makes for a snappy political sound bite mouthed by Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and others, health care cannot be a legitimate human right.
Economist Murray Rothbard explained in his book “The Ethics of Liberty” that “the very concept of ‘rights’ is a ‘negative’ one, demarcating the areas of a person’s action that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a ‘right’ to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced.”
If government assigns positive rights to others, some of us will be forced to pay for it. No right to health care is a legitimate right. You have a right to seek the health care you need through voluntary exchange, but you don’t have a right to force someone else to pay for it.
Mr. Rothbard continued, “In the free society, no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former’s rights; the only legal obligation one man has to another is to respect the other man’s rights.”
If the cost of health care makes it a privilege, it is due to government interference in the health care market, which began decades ago.
