Health Care a Right?

With his usual clarity, Walter Williams breaks down the real difference between negative and positive rights:

"...Say a person, let's call him Harry, suffers from diabetes and he has no means to pay a laboratory for blood work, a doctor for treatment and a pharmacy for medication. Does Harry have a right to XYZ lab's and Dr. Jones' services and a prescription from a pharmacist? And, if those services are not provided without charge, should Harry be able to call for criminal sanctions against those persons for violating his rights to health care?

You say, "Williams, that would come very close to slavery if one person had the right to force someone to serve him without pay." You're right.

Suppose instead of Harry being able to force a lab, doctor and pharmacy to provide services without pay, Congress uses its taxing power to take a couple of hundred dollars out of the paycheck of some American to give to Harry so that he could pay the lab, doctor and pharmacist. Would there be any difference in principle, namely forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another?...

...True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another. In other words, my rights to speech or travel impose no obligations on another except those of noninterference.

If we apply ideas behind rights to health care to my rights to speech or travel, my free speech rights would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with an auditorium, television studio or radio station. My right to travel freely would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with airfare and hotel accommodations.

For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, or any other good or service, whether a person can afford it or not, it must diminish someone else's rights, namely their rights to their earnings...

New York's Latest Assault on Individualism

From The Center for Consumer Freedom:


Grapes can kill you. And New York City lawmakers want to make sure you’re aware of that danger the next time you unassumingly pick up some produce at your local grocery store. Grapes aren’t the only “threat” targeted by city lawmakers in a bill that would mandate warnings on bite-size foods -- known to be choking hazards for kids younger than five. The ordinance would also add popcorn, pistachios, and peanut butter to the ever-growing list of dangers to our health.

This morsel mandate is a clear-cut example of a public-policy “slippery slope.” Councilmember Domenic Recchia justified his proposal by citing the city’s menu-labeling law as a precedent: “If they can put the number of calories on products sold to the public from fast food restaurants, then we could put labels on products that are dangerous to children.” Following that logic, politicians could label, regulate, or ban anything that’s potentially harmful, which translates to “anything under the sun” (and probably the sun itself too).