If health care is a right, then what is the cost of freedom?
When I was in grade school, Mr. Dexter, the bus mechanic, gave a speech to us kids about proper bus safety and how if we didn’t comply, we wouldn’t be allowed the transport. He’d say with authority, “Riding the bus is a privilege, not a right.”
Now that I look back on it, I’d bet a lot of people these days would disagree with ol’ Dexter. They’d say that every child has a right to an education and that includes access to it. I don’t disagree with the sentiment that to educate is essential, but I do think it’s important that we understand the difference between a right and a privilege (or benefit.)
Recently, a Time Magazine commentary declared that paid sick days should be a right, and not a “benefit” as they are currently classified by employers. The author’s reasoning is that since paid sick days are not required to be offered by law, employers don’t offer them and workers are bringing the sick with them to work. This, I’m sure, is true. People can’t afford to miss work, so they go when they’re sick. I’ve done this myself. And his remedy to make compulsory compensation for sick time would have benefits.
[Of course it's also true what this guy commented on another news site:
We got rid of our sick leave. If we offered 8 days per year, everyone was sick 8 days per year. When we lowered it down to 6, everyone was sick 6 days per year. Every employee was using them as extended vacations. So we eliminated them.
So first off we should appreciate that there are two sides to this: that legally requiring paid sick days would help---and it would be abused. Which side would outweigh the other would have to be determined. I'm not here to guess. But I am interested in the terminology.]
To most, a right is something that no one should be able to take from you. They are indisputable freedoms that are held untouchable with rare exception. I agree with this. And most of us appreciate our right to religion, speech, etc.—freedoms to do fundamental human activity.
Things change, though, when you enter into the realm of education, health care, wages, and other similar opportunities. The problem with declaring rights is these realms is that if they are held to the same standard as the right to express and worship as you wish, then what does this imply about poor countries that can’t afford K-12 education or health care for all? If these are rights, then all but the fewest richest countries are violating human rights. (Indeed, the author of the Time Magazine article deemed it “inhumane” to not force workers or offer paid sick leave.)
But rights aren’t dependent on wealth. Rights are universal. And if you label things that cost money as rights, then you’re indicating that rights are something to be bought.
I assume that one who believes health care to be a right would give a pass to poor countries, but then where exactly does this “right” begin? Haiti would get a pass; America does not. If so, Haitian’s rights are fewer? (That’s not right.) If a right is determined by wealth, we’re not talking about rights anymore. We’re talking about things that are very nice to have; that are required by law in some places. (This is what the author was getting at: to make this law. Okay, but don’t confuse that with a right. It’s confusing to me why he, a professor at Columbia University, wouldn’t understand this.)
The other issue is that health care, education, and the like all require the cooperation of other people. So if it’s a child’s right to be educated and treated for chicken pox, then a government must force someone to provide it. And now we’re starting to chip away at a person’s individual freedom—that they are not the owner of their person, but the State is. That’s a problem. Rights are not dependent on the cooperation of others. Violations of our rights occur when we’re prevented to do the things we want, say what we want, believe in the God we want, etc.
Advocating for universal health care or paid sick days is one thing. Arguing that they should be mandatory is also a case to make. But misusing the term “right” by declaring any luxury you think all should have as one conjures up an ideology that is inaccurate.
This was previously published on New Plateaus.
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Image credit: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr
About Brandon Ferdig
If someone comes to work sick and infects me with their virus, hasn’t he violated my Person? And how is paying a professional to administer vaccinations “forcing”?
If they do it’s purposefully. But that’s unenforceable in my book. (Though I believe there are cases where people have been tried for knowingly passing STDs). But how can we truly know motive?
Your second point is a really good one. To answer your question: it’s not forcing as virtually all doctors will give vaccines for pay. But it would be different if a doctor was against a certain procedure, and let’s assume that the procedure was considered non-elective. Then if health care is a right, the gov’t would have to force the doctor’s hand. (I know it’s far removed from real application 99.9% of the time; plus there’d usually be other doctors, but the principle is clear that underlying the source of this right are other people’s cooperation in making it happen.)
will respond to this in more detail later. until then, here’s this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiBt-pqp0E
What I’m confused about here is why a human right must be, by definition, free.
The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, states that every person has a right to “security of person.” If a person’s safety is threatened, someone else is obligated to step in and protect. Oh, and police forces and armies cost money. And the right to legal representation (which is a separate right but still important in upholding other freedoms, such as the freedom of speech) also costs money.
Sorry, but rights frequently cost money to uphold. But that doesn’t mean Haiti and other countries unable to provide universal healthcare would get a “pass.” Nobody is excusing any government from protecting – or providing the necessities for upholding – human rights. Some rights are simply not possible to provide and protect at the moment, and that is something that needs to be, and is consistently, worked towards.
By your logic, slaves who could not afford legal and other protections do not have a right to freedom. Because protecting their rights costs something, their right to be free must be a “luxury” or a “privilege.”
Come on.
Fair points.
But the rights you bring up aren’t necessary until one’s fundamental rights are first taken from them. I can walk down my childhood neighborhood with absolutely no threat to my security. I don’t have to buy a gun for protection or pay taxes to a police force. There’s simply no threat. Man in his natural state is secure from others.
I don’t mean to say there aren’t neighborhoods elsewhere that are threatening, but the price you’d pay for security in these areas is only in response to someone first expending to take yours from you–whether it be a robber or whatever. Same goes for the right to legal representation. This is only pertinent once a gov”t first takes away your freedom by arresting you.
And security from others is as far as we can take it. The U.N. right you mention is silly because does it support, then, my right to security when I’m in the woods and being chased by a bear or when I’m on a volcano and it explodes?
Lastly, if Haiti doesn’t get a pass, then would you support the U.N. condemning their government for human rights abuses for not providing universal health care or free K-12 education in the wake of the earthquake there?
“Man in his natural state”? You could have titled this article “Why Universal Healthcare Doesn’t Constitute a Natural Right in the Approximation of Some 15th to 18th Century Philosophers,” and then we could have pondered why that was necessary to say, and agreed with you.
But then, with that more honest approach, I could still argue that the elusive concept of “natural rights” often included the right to property, and with it, governmental protection for said property, whether or not you live in one of those magical neighborhoods that are apparently impervious to all crime, ever.
Both legal rights and “natural rights” carry with them some cost, whether to implement or to uphold. So making a distinction between the ones that we must pay to protect, and the ones we must pay to implement, is nonsense. What I see as a much more harmful distinction, however, is the one between a right and a privilege. The latter carries with it incredibly harmful connotations, some of which leave the service in question open to only being implemented in certain areas, among select groups, and that still remaining ethical.
You’re right to call out my terminology. My knowledge of philosophy and the deeper meaning of what “right” means is lacking. I may not be able to define what a right is, exactly, but I do know what rights aren’t, and that’s what this post was all about.
I addressed your middle paragraph in the previous comment.
Your last paragraph hit the nail on the head. Your fear of these harmful consequences causes you to grip onto health care and education and call them rights.
In practice, a right is only a right if one has the ability to enforce/support it, with the ideal enforcement/support organized via some form of liberal and democratic group consensus (i.e. social contract and morality).
In absence of the above, a right only exists in vaporware.
True, but vaporware is still something. That’s all rights are–beliefs. Beliefs, ideas–it’s all vaporware. I’d amend your “democratic group consensus”, too. A democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. California democratically voted to ban gay marriage. Democracy can very hard on rights.
There are a few things I think worth debating here, but can we first establish what it is you think you mean by ‘man in his natural state’? It seems to be a central point in your argument, albeit not mentioned in the post itself, as it covers the wide reaching and nebulous concept of natural rights. Based on what you’ve written my understanding of your thoughts on man’s ‘natural state’ are as follows: The natural state you refer to is an almost cartoonishly silly image of a neighborhood you grew up in as a child. Had it occurred to you that the presumed safety of that neighbourhood owes a lot to a culture of effective policing strategies, good city planning, coincidences in the housing markets, the ready availability of jobs which allow for upward mobility and guarantee basic safety in the work place, not to mention the fact of of your privelaged position as an American citizen more generally? Among a multitude of other things, these all contributed to creating a safe environment for you to walk the streets. ‘Natural state’ has nothing to do with it as these are things that are almost all, to a greater or lesser extent, a result of effective mandated government strategy. This mythical crime free neighborhood, from what I gather the suburban equivalent of a unicorn but that’s neither here nor there, owes its comfortable state to careful, regulated planning mixed with a bit of blind luck and the misfortune of many others not quite so blessed. It could hardly be called an example of a species wide natural state. So, since we’re so into arguing semantics, you may wish to start by clarifying your own terms.
You’re right to call out my terminology. My knowledge of philosophy and the deeper meaning of what “right” means is lacking. I may not be able to define what a right is, exactly, but I do know what rights aren’t, and that’s what this post was all about.
Thank you for you civil reply, it’s a rarity on the internet. So you’re arguing in the negative, attempting to prove what is not a right without first having a clear idea of what a right is. Surely you can see the fallacy in this line of reasoning? As already established, the idea of ‘rights’, natural or otherwise, is difficult to define, to the point where entire academic careers have been built on this very idea for centuries. Yet you are attempting to create a clear line across which ‘rights’ do not apply and arguing it from a presumed base of knowledge you admit you do not have. Without first having at least some personal concept of where rights do apply, your understanding of where they do not must be called into question.
P.S. It might make for more interesting debate if you didn’t just copy and paste the same replies across different comments
“Surely you can see the fallacy in this line of reasoning?” No, I don’t. We don’t know what dark matter is, either. But I know it’s not my kitchen table or the anvil in the garage. We don’t know what created the universe, but I’m going to eliminate the idea that God created it in six days. Just because we can’t definitively define what a right is, doesn’t mean we can’t argue about what isn’t. In fact, we get closer to the truth when we rid the discussion of inaccurate notions. That’s what this piece was about.
“Without first having at least some personal concept of where rights do apply.” But I do. I don’t have a dissertation to give, but I have ideas and you made fun of them in your last post.
I’m, frankly, not even sure where to begin with this but let’s pick something… can you be certain, without reasonable doubt, that God did not create the universe in 6 days?
Read more at http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-good-life-privilege-vs-rights-an-important-distinction/#PZQqmCdXXog6omdw.99
I’m, frankly, not even sure where to begin with this but let’s pick something… can you be certain, without reasonable doubt, that God did not create the universe in 6 days?