Fallacy - Healthcare is a Right

The difference between a right and a privilege is that a right requires no-one to provide labor or resources without compensation, while a privilege does. Our right to privacy requires nothing of anybody else. Our rights to self-defense, property and free trade are equally non-demanding on others.

However, the word right is often used to mean a privilege received in return for loyalty, and it is in this context that the concept of human rights has its origin. Human rights are constructs of the state, enumerating the sort of privileges that loyal subjects are entitled to. Most, if not all the provisions enumerated under the concept of human rights require someone to provide labor or resources without compensation.

When people claim that health care is a human right, they're implying that this type of service should be provided free of charge to the recipient. However. health care is not free. Someone has to pay. Someone has to give up labor and/or resources in order to provide the service. Since the state itself is nothing but a bureaucracy, it cannot provide the service itself. Hence, it must tax someone.

The argument that health care is a right is in other words a variation on the argument that water should be free. It is simply not true nor possible. If health care is provided to someone free of charge, that someone is a privileged individual, receiving something at the expense of somebody else.

By Robert Kaufmann - This image is from the FEMA Photo Library., Public Domain, Link