I'm tired of reading and hearing progressives frame the health care debate as an issue of rights versus privileges. Calling health care a human right does not make it one, for a number of reasons I aim to explain below the fold.
Before addressing whether or not health care is a right, we need better definitions for both human rights and health care. Without an understanding of what we're saying, "healthcare is a human right" is a throwaway phrase with no intrinsic meaning.
Health Care
Health care is an ambiguous term because it does not specify any particular level of care. Does the term refer only to basic care? Does it also include preventative medicine? What about elective procedures? Fertility treatments? Cosmetic surgery? Gym memberships? Dieticians? Where is the line drawn?
Under the current system, the line is drawn by your insurer, or if you have no coverage, your bank account. The latter option is only truly workable for the very wealthy or the very healthy. The former option provides a certain amount of flexibility (women can decline maternity coverage, for example) in what is and what is not covered. Yes, the insurance companies can sometimes be rather nasty in what claims they accept and reject, but that does not point to a wholly flawed system, simply one that needs to be improved.
Rather than digress further, I'll propose that the term health care as being used by progressives in this debate encompasses total coverage of all non-elective (life-saving surgery) and preventative procedures (e.g. annual physicals). I'll further add that the concept of providing health care for free or at low cost also figures in to this definition.
Human Rights
The more loaded term is right. This is also an ambiguous term, not because of what it refers to, but because of what people think it refers to.
A human right is some freedom you can exercise as an individual. The first amendment of the United States Constitution tells us about the right to free speech:
Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ...
Read this closely. The amendment tells us that Congress won't pass any laws that limit what we, as individuals, can say. The right is guaranteed as a freedom from limitation. The right is not granted, or given ... simply acknowledged. This is an important distinction, and one worth explaining further.
You have the right to free speech anywhere in the world. No matter the country, no matter your citizenship, you have that right. It's intrinsic to your being. What differentiates the United States from many other nations, is that the first amendment to our Constitution recognizes that right.
Other nations are more restrictive, some extremely so. Such nations may not like what you say when you exercise that right, and they may punish you for it. This does not mean you can lose that right, however.
I hope this establishes first and foremost that rights are not something given by the government to the people. Rights are something guaranteed not to be taken away from the people by the government. You may be familiar with the word "unalienable" used to describe rights in the Declaration of Independence. Something "alienable" can be taken away. Something "unalienable" cannot.
The other aspect of a right is that the exercise of that right requires only the action of the individual. You don't need anyone's help to exercise your right to free speech -- just start talking, or writing, or performing an interpretive dance, or whatever form of speech you enjoy. You have the right to do so.
You might be inclined to interject here that the sixth and seventh amendments guarantee a right to trial by jury. How can we square this with an understanding of rights which precludes the involvement of third-party participants? Remember that rights guarantee freedoms the government will not deny you. There is not guarantee that a jury of your peers will show up to court, but there is a guarantee that the government will not prevent them from showing up to court.
As above, rights are for the people to exercise themselves, not for the government or anyone else to exercise for them.
Health Care as a Human Right
If rights are something acknowledged, not received, how can health care be a right? It cannot.
The Declaration of Independence states:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The "Right to Life" described here is not intended to be interpreted as the "Right to have my Life cared for by others". Remember, rights are something not taken away from the individual. The government may not take away your life. That's it. If your life is in danger because you're sick, the government is not obligated to help you. Your right to life is not being threatened by your illness -- rights can only be threatened by governments.
What do you do about your illness, then?
Health care involves the participation of doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug companies, medical equipment companies, pharmacists, etc. There are a lot of people in the health care field expecting some form of compensation for the products and services they provide. I doubt anyone here would seriously suggest that all these individuals and orgainzations work for free (they would take other jobs instead) in order to provide health care to everyone. Doctors need to eat, too.
Since we've established that the provision of health care incurs some real cost, there is no tangible way to reconcile a right to health care with the second aspect I discussed above. If you are dependent on others for your health care, you receive such care at their mercy. While some may offer it for free, most will expect to be paid, if not by you, by your insurer, or the government.
The Island
Let's suppose you live on a remote island with a small population. Let's also suppose that no doctors live on the island. How, on this island, could anyone exercise a right to health care? Under this situation, nobody can exercise such a right.
What if we hire a doctor to live on the island?
What if no doctor wants to live there?
What if we train someone on the island to be a doctor?
What if no one wants to undergo the training?
And what good is simply bringing a doctor? A GP can only do so much. What about nurses? What about lab facilities? Equipment such as an MRI, X-Ray machine, etc.? What about the technicians to operate these devices? What about a pharmacist to dispense drugs and protect against dangerous combinations of medication? What about a specialist for cancer, or heart disease, or neurological conditions?
Health care is a big field. A small population cannot inherently buy all the care they need, as there are, and always will be, more forms of care available.
You're probably thinking my example is preposterous. It's not. I recently vacationed in the Caribbean, on an island with only a health clinic. For anything worse than a broken bone, you'd need to fly to a bigger country with better facilities.
A right to health care does one no good without access to health care. Access to health care requires the involvement of doctors, etc. as I stated above. Rights don't require third-party participation.
The Nation
You're probably also thinking that my example doesn't work for a country as large and as wealthy as the United States. Supply and demand doesn't disappear when the size of either grows. There are a limited number of doctors in this country. I, personally, have recently visited both my doctor and my dentists. I scheduled appointments two weeks in advance for both, because that's as early as they could see me. Will insuring those other 40-something million others without coverage guarantee that they can actually see a doctor or a dentist?
You're probably expecting me to regurgitate some GOP talking point about waiting lists. There are already waiting lists. That's not a talking point; that's a fact. You can't shorten or eliminate them by declaring health care a human right, or by allowing more people access to the system.
I can exercise my right to free speech any time I like. If I have to wait weeks, or even months, to exercise a "right" to health care, is it really a right?
Why don't we add more doctors?
Doctors don't come cheap. There's a lot of education involved. Most everyone I know who has gone into medicine has done so out of concern for the welfare of others. They endure up to a decade of higher education to train for their careers, followed by multiple years of on-the-job training, sometimes as much as another decade.
To address a shortage of doctors today, we would have had to start incentivizing the medical field to attract more students in 1999. You can't produce a doctor overnight, no matter how much you may want to do so.
Now you may be eyeing the word "incentivizing". If we work on the premise that most people enter the medical field out of a concern for others (based on my totally unscientific anecdotal evidence), that means that recruiting other people to the field will have to appeal to other desires. If we intend to expand the number of doctors in this country, we're going to pay for it one way or another.
Free speech doesn't require the government to hand out money to individuals seeking to speak freely.
The People
Access to health care can be limited for reasons other than aggregate demand. Within the population of individuals seeking health care, there are different economic strata. There are the wealthy and the well-employed, who can afford health care themselves. There are the poor who are eligible for government overage. Finally, there are the in-betweens who aren't poor enough to get government coverage, but aren't employed well enough to afford their own (either individually or through their employer).
The wealthy and the well-employed will always have better access to health care. That's a simply fact of life. It's not something a public option, or even a single-payer system, can correct.
One problem facing Medicare now is that reimbursement rates aren't keeping up with the actual expenses doctors incur when providing care. The only way doctors can make ends meet is to increase rates for their other patients to compensate, or to refuse Medicare altogether. A public option has the potential to encounter the same issues. If the public option only reimburses up to a certain level, a doctor may well refuse to treat patients with that coverage.
But there are other doctors!
How many Medicare-friendly doctors are out there? How many patients on Medicare? The potential for waiting lists to expand is substantial. In addition, the distance a patient is required to travel to get to a doctor which accepts Medicare could be greater than that of other doctors. The mobility of a poor person without a car can limit their access to health care.
How do you exercise a right to health care if the only doctor that will accept your coverage is too far away?
Guns
One (mind-bogglingly poor) argument I heard concerning this whole issue concerns the second amendment. In response to a comment indicating that health care cannot be a right because it has a cost, this individual stated that the right to have a gun cannot be a right because it has a cost (the gun). This is seriously wrong, and gives us an instructive guide to what could be a right in regards to health care.
The second amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
To me, the distinction between this right and what progressives are seeking when talking about health care as a right is night and day. This has to do with the right to keep and bear arms, not the right to have the government provide arms to you.
You can exercise this right very easily if you own a gun. You can also exercise it if you own a sword, a large stick, or a kitchen knife. Perhaps you know kung fu and your hands and feet are deadly weapons. There are countless ways to keep and bear arms that don't require anything from the government, or from a third party.
Any direct comparison between the right to keep and bear arms and a right to government-paid health care is invalid. At best, one could claim a right to seek and obtain health care at one's own expense.
You can lose the right Anyway
I've covered quite a lot of territory here. If I haven't convinced you that healthcare is not a right from my arguments above, perhaps the Supreme Court will change your mind regarding a similar "right".
Flemming v. Nestor
The short version is that a man who spent 19 years working in the United States was denied Social Security benefits, despite having paid into the system during that time. If you thought you had a right to Social Security, you're wrong. Social security is a privilege afforded to those who stay in the government's good graces.
Even staying within the government's good graces is not enough. A bump in the retirement age, or a cut in retirement benefits, can change your life significantly. These things are functionally beyond your control -- the policy and economic aspects are subject to both the whims of Congress and the ability of the United States to pay her bills.
Any "right" to health care would similarly be subject to these same forces. The current administration may pass a public option. The subsequent administration may cut it. What kind of right is that?
Health Care is a Privilege
If you still don't agree with me, consider how you might exercise your "right" to health care in a foreign country. I already covered the issue of limited access due to limited facilities, but what about a country with a large health care system and substantial facilities? Can you expect the same level of care as a non-citizen than you might get at home? Does your insurance cover you abroad? Would the public option?
Where you don't have access paid for by your insurer or government, health care is a privilege to you. Where you do have access, health care is a privilege afforded to those who do have insurance or are enrolled in a government plan. Neither of these situations equates to a right, as your insurance policy can end, and a government program can be canceled or expire.
Health care is a privilege to those who can afford it, either by paying for it directly as individuals, or paying indirectly through an insurer or government.
But I need health care!
You need food, too. Do you have a right to food? No. You have the right to obtain food, but not at the expense of another.
Can you wander on to a farm, take whatever you want, and walk away? Yes, absolutely. It's called stealing. The farmer may call the cops, sick his dog on you, or simply unload his shotgun into your back as you flee (bet you wish you had a right to health care!). He's exercising his right to protect his property. Your right to food doesn't extend beyond your own garden.
Please stop referring to health care a right. Doing so cheapens any discussion of actual rights.