The "right" to health care

The GeekWithA.45 links to and comments on the latest video from Bill Whittle wherein he talks about whether or not we as Americans have a right to health care. Bill also expands on the content of the video and the response to it at his website, and provides a link to the text version at NRO for those who are unable to watch the video or prefer reading it.

After reading through the comments to Bill's post, I understood that simply saying we don't have a right to health care, or many other things, isn't quite accurate. We actually do have a right to health care, shelter, big-screen TV's, etc. We have a right to them in the sense that we cannot be prevented from obtaining them if we want to and are able to.

What we do not have are entitlements to these things. We cannot demand that they be given to us for free. What Barack Obama means when he says health care should be a right is really that it should be an entitlement and must be provided to us either by the government itself, or by other agencies under government mandate. This leads to the The GeekWithA.45's post where he notes, "the right to for you to have something creates the duty for someone else to provide that thing." If you replace the word "right" with "entitlement" in that sentence, it is entirely correct.

As an analogy, consider the Second Amendment. It says we have the right to keep and bear arms. This means that we have the right to obtain and possess weapons such as firearms, knives, swords, etc. (Just how powerful a weapon we have the right to possess is beyond the scope of this discussion.) But the Second Amendment does not mean that anyone, whether it be the government or someone else, is required to provide us with such weapons. We must still obtain them ourselves. We have the right to bear arms, but we are not entitled to have them given to us.

Rights are inherent in our existence, or as Bill notes, they are birthrights. Rights impose no obligation on any other people except that they cannot prevent us from exercising them. They do not require that anyone facilitate such exercise. Bill notes in his video:

[T]here’s a word for someone who has their food, housing and care provided for them… for people who owe their existence to someone else.

And that word is “slaves.”

This is equally true of people who are required to work for the benefit of others, to provide goods and/or services without being compensated for their time and effort. In Barack Obama's America, both kinds will exist, and government will be the master.