Do people have a right to health care?

It is important that you establish what rights framework you are working in before that question can be answered coherently. Those that still believe in Natural Rights would undoubtedly say no, you have no such right as you are not owed a positive duty, but natural rights are "out of fashion" so to speak, and have become fairly discredited as far as political philosophy goes. It is also important to distinguish between a legal, social and ethical right. You can be legally entitled to a thing, and in that sense have a legal right, even if we might disagree as to whether you have an ethical right to that thing. While everyone can acknowledge that you do have a legal right to at least basic emergency healthcare, as this is just a fact of the law, many people will disagree as to whether that legal right is actually ethical. Many people believe that you owe no positive moral duty to strangers even though you owe them a negative duty to basically not cause them any harm. Depending on your moral philosophy, you can have a radically different outlook on what sorts of duties and rights exist as a matter of ethics. The utilitarian will basically say your ethical duty depends on the consequences of an act, whereas the deontologist will say the consequences are irrelevant, but rather there is a right act always and forever for any given case. Extending these to social norms will result in radically different bodies of law.

These days utilitarianism has largely triumphed as the prevailing legal philosophy with some deontology at the edges (in particular in the criminal law), and rights are generally treated as more or less a social construct meant to serve a particular purpose and achieve a particular outcome. In that sense, the word "right" has a more technical meaning and a less universal moral one, as what you are entitled to is really a question of circumstances.

/r/NeutralPolitics Thread