Opinion

Health care may be charity, but it's not a right

Posted August 10, 2017 12:01 am

Maria Fort argues in a July 29 edition that health care should be a human right. For that to happen, it would have to be right, as in moral, to coerce someone to complete four years of college, four years of medical school, six years of a residency and then force them to treat someone for free.

Or if you think we should pay doctors, then it would have to be moral to force anyone to work hard to get an education or learn a trade and then force them to work for free, or to forcibly take the money they have earned, so that the doctor can be paid to treat someone for free.

Health care is not a right. To think so is to believe that some people have the right to the labor of others without compensating them. That is called slavery or maybe serfdom. We may decide as a society to provide health care as a form of charity, but it is definitely not a right.

Mark Bodett

Wheaton

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