When I saw the title of Senator Bernie Sanders' piece -- "Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege" at Real Clear Politics, I was irritated, because I disagree wholeheartedly. But when I clicked on the link, expecting a philosophical explanation to dissect, I found nothing except a bare and unexplained premise that rights are created by majority rule:

As the health care debate heats up in Washington, we as a nation have to answer two very fundamental questions. First, should all Americans be entitled to health care as a right and not a privilege - which is the way every other major country treats health care and the way we respond to such other basic needs as education, police and fire protection? Second, if we are to provide quality health care to all, how do we accomplish that in the most cost-effective way possible?

I think the answer to the first question is pretty clear, and one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected president. Most Americans do believe that all of us should have health care coverage, and that nobody should be left out of the system. The real debate is how we accomplish that goal in an affordable and sustainable way...

But there's a huge problem: even if the majority thinks socialized medicine is desirable, that does not make health care a right. In the American philosophical tradition, rights are innate to human beings, and are defined as what government cannot take away. Those things the government might decide to give citizens by various forms of income redistribution cannot be said to be rights as they are not innate, but come and go, and are subject to the vagaries of the political process. Whatever citizens might vote to give themselves or vote to discontinue giving to themselves are not rights.

So, even if a majority wants to socialize the health care industry (itself a debatable point), that could change with a new administration elected with a pledge to reprivatize it. It is no more a "right" than a new highway project, and a majority being for it right now does not transform it into a right.

Aside from his recital of "majority rule" (or the even more irrelevant claim that "every other major country" does what he favors) Sanders offers no theory under which "health care" is a "right." I was hoping he'd at least cite the Constitution's "general welfare" or "necessary and proper" clauses. Or maybe the Declaration's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." A good argument can be made that citizens have a right to buy whatever* health care they can afford (because after all, it's their money), but that no more confers a right to have others pay for it than the Second Amendment guarantees a "right" to have the government provide each citizen with a gun at taxpayers' expense! To create such a novel right, the Constitution would have to be amended. But in any case, Sanders didn't say that. He offers no actual theory of a "right to health care" for me to dispute.

I'm very disappointed.

* Interestingly, the right to buy only the type of health care you want and no more would be taken away by state-mandated socialized health care programs. Saying you have to have something is precisely the opposite of a right. If the government mandated church attendance and provided all citizens with churches, would that be called a "right to spiritual care"?

If that's not absurd enough for you, how about state-mandated marriage for all citizens, under the name of the "right to marriage"?

Things which the government makes us do are not rights. I hope people aren't dumb enough to fall for such nonsense.

MORE: Regarding the idea of democratically voting away freedom, I think this guest writer at Samizdata nails it:

What makes Americans' surrender to statism so shameful is that we freely chose this course in direct contravention of our founding principles.

Is there a right to choose not to be free?

I don't know, but I'm not sure I like the idea of others being able to do it on my behalf.

Isn't surrendering to statism bad enough without calling it a right?

Really, if this keeps up, they'll eventually call slavery "the right to work."