'Right' to healthcare

"One of the misconceptions of rights today is that man has a ‘right to a job’, a ‘right to health care’, a ‘right to education’, a ‘right to a house’ – that man has a ‘right’ to things simply because he claims he needs or wants them.

The sanction of such alleged ‘rights’ is the first step toward the destruction of rights. If man has ‘rights’ to health care, to education, to a house, then the appropriate questions to be asked next are: Who is to provide them? And at whose expense?

Jobs, health care, education and houses are not products of nature, nor can they be products of government – because by the nature of government, it cannot be a corporation and a producer – but the products of the men who produced them.

If a man is entitled by ‘right’ to the products of others, it means that those others are deprived of their rights to earn and keep their own property and their rights to sell to whomever they choose. If a man is entitled by ‘right’ to the products of others, those others are essentially condemned to slave labor. A ‘right’ that violates the rights of others is a contradiction in terms. No such ‘rights’ can exist."

- Ho Say Peng