Health Care Is a Right? Not if People Are Free
By Byron Schlomach
Everything humans consume must be produced by someone. That includes health care. Therefore, to claim a fundamental human right to consume something for free is to claim a right to another human’s labor. The word for this is “slavery.”
Scoffing at this fact is easy. After all, doctors in nations that provide free health care are paid and hardly look like slaves. But a gilded cage does not change the moral calculus. Mutual enslavement by taxation is not moral, much less workable, when the taxes pay for something that is not truly of mutual benefit to all, as with national defense and police services.
Suppose all agreed in a small, isolated town that all had a right to free health care administered by the only doctor. The doctor would go bankrupt and could not treat anyone for lack of supplies, so the townspeople tax themselves to pay the doctor according to his prices.
At first, he charges what he has in the past. But since no individual pays for care, the doctor is soon over-worked, so he repeatedly raises prices. He soon has the best house in town, great facilities, and many assistants, but the townspeople are being impoverished. They decide to limit the doctor’s prices and services. At this point, the doctor is practically enslaved, along with everybody in town who must pay for everybody else’s health care.
