The implicit premise, or moral narrative, behind many arguments for government involvement or increased involvement in medical care is that health care is a “right.”  But debates typically avoid this issue, even though it’s fundamental to what drives people to get politicians involved in what should be private decisions.

As many authors have pointed out, health care is not a right.

Stefan Molyneux tries to understand what this alleged “right” to health could mean. For example:

When does a woman in the process of becoming a doctor switch from someone with a right to receive health care to someone with an obligation to provide it? In other words, since from one day to the next she becomes subjected to completely opposite moral absolutes, what changes in her nature? Does she somehow become a different species? And at what objective point does it occur? It’s certainly not the first day of her classes – and yet it is also not ten years into her career. Is it at 12:01am on the day before she sees her first patient? Is that when she flips into this alternate and opposite moral universe? Think about how silly this is as a moral theory – 12:00am, she is owed health care – 12:01am, she owes everyone else health care. Madness!

If you want more questions to make you wonder what the “right” to health care means in practice, read the whole article: The Argument From Morality in Action: The Right to Health Care.

(Via Justin Longo.)