Healthcare as a Right...I can’t believe we are still doing this

It’s on bumper stickers, billboards, and, of course, it’s Bernie Sanders’s favorite catchphrase: “Healthcare is a human right!!” The problem is that most people chanting this have no idea what it actually implies. This isn’t about compassion. It isn’t about insurance coverage. It’s about whether society can morally claim ownership over another person’s labor.

The United States was built on negative rights, the kind that restrain government power. That tradition comes from the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and the Enlightenment. Free speech, due process, voluntary assembly, the right to vote, and the right to keep and bear arms all fall in this category. Government cannot restrict them.

Positive rights, by contrast, require someone else to produce or provide something. These are extremely rare in American law. The clearest example is the right to a jury trial. And yes, if you refuse to serve on a jury, the government can jail you. Because a positive right requires someone’s labor to fulfill it.

So if healthcare is declared a “right,” then doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, and everyone else involved are not just professionals. They become obligated labor because positive rights require an actual producer. Without that enforcement, the slogan is meaningless.

Other countries illustrate this perfectly. The UK legally recognizes healthcare as a right, yet patients typically wait weeks to see a primary care doctor and months for specialist care. Canada also proclaims healthcare as a right, yet patients routinely wait four to six months for advanced imaging and face some of the longest surgical queues in the developed world.

Canada’s own Supreme Court has stated: “Access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare.” The United States has almost never declared a right to another person’s labor, outside of jury duty or, occasionally, military conscription.

People often point to police and fire services as examples of “positive rights.” But these are not rights. They are public utilities. A city collects taxes and contracts with firefighters to provide fire protection. If the budget is cut and the firefighters quit, no one accuses them of violating anyone’s “right.” The obligation is on the municipality, not the worker.

Healthcare already works the same way in many contexts. Local governments contract with hospitals to provide trauma, stroke, and emergency services. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) obligates hospitals, not individual physicians, to provide stabilization. If a hospital stops offering trauma services, it loses its trauma designation. No doctor is forced to perform surgery against their will. If police and fire imply a “right,” then by that same logic, we already have a functional right to healthcare in America. Nothing more to do here. Problem solved.

Public defenders are another misunderstood example. You do not have a “right” to a particular lawyer’s labor. You have a right against the government prosecuting you without offering representation. If the government can’t fund a lawyer, the case gets thrown out. The burden is entirely on the state, not on any specific attorney. Again, an obligation on the government, not compulsory labor from a citizen.

The distinction is fundamental.

Public safety nets are policy choices. We can fund safety-net hospitals like fire departments. We can subsidize care for low-income populations. Municipalities can contract with doctors, nurses, and paramedics to ensure access. We have this now. What we don’t need is a meaningless aphorism that smuggles in a moral claim over the labor of others. Declaring healthcare a right moves the frame from “the system should support access” to “you must provide care regardless of compensation.”

Countries that adopt this model enforce it. In Canada and the UK, you can’t practice medicine without agreeing to the government’s fixed rates. Opting out is essentially impossible. When healthcare becomes a right, the government sets the prices and clinicians must accept them or leave the profession entirely. That is compulsory participation, and it’s why the distinction is so important.

Claiming a right to a doctor’s labor is fundamentally different from funding public health infrastructure. It collapses the difference between the services we choose to fund collectively and the labor we demand by moral decree. A society that wants accessible healthcare should invest in systems, incentives, and infrastructure, not pretend that declaring demand magically produces supply.

Or maybe it’s just a meaningless slogan.