Healthcare Is Not a Right

US senator Rand Paul explains why healthcare is not a human right, by arguing that no one owns the labor of another person. "If I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care, do you have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be. If you believe in a right to health care, you’re believing in basically the use of force to conscript someone to do your bidding."

Source: Bernie Sanders YouTube channel.

Transcript:

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services, do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? You’re basically saying you believe in slavery. You’re saying you believe in taking and extracting from another person. Our founding documents were very clear about this. You have a right to pursue happiness but there’s no guarantee of physical comfort. There’s no guarantee of concrete items. In order to give something concrete, you have to take it from someone. So there’s an implied threat of force.

If I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care, do you have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be. If you believe in a right to health care, you’re believing in basically the use of force to conscript someone to do your bidding.

Now just because it's a noble thing to believe that we are obligated as Christians, we are obligated to the Hippocratic Oath, we have always done this. Since the beginning of modern medicine we have always provided 100 percent access. I do it in exchange for privileges. I do it because I believe in the Hippocratic Oath. But my hospital also says to me, you can only operate in this hospital if you agree to see everyone coming through the emergency room. I always have. People have always had 100 percent access to our emergency room. Those are for emergencies - those are not the best place for primary care. But we've always had a 100 percent free access...