Is Health Care a Right?

Advocates for universal health are often heard declaring that health care should be a “universal right.” Avik Roy, at Forbes, argues that whether one considers health care a positive or negative right, the claim is problematic:

It’s a great applause line, isn’t it, to say that “health care is a universal human right.”

But after the applause has died down, we’re left with the question that the left rarely takes time to answer: what is health care?

Let’s say there’s a new treatment for terminal prostate cancer, one that extends your life, on average, by two months. The treatment costs one million dollars per patient. Does every American have a right to that treatment? Is two months of life worth a million dollars?

What if I smoke two packs a day, and I come down with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a costly chronic condition. Do I have a right to the money of other people, in order to care for a disease that I, in all likelihood, brought upon myself?

A progressive might respond that we need to provide basic health care to everyone, so that no one is left dying on the street after getting hit by a bus. But we already provide “free” emergency care to every American. So what else counts as basic health care? Is Viagra health care? Is all health care a right, or just some? And who decides? These are the questions that no applause line can adequately answer.