Don Boudreaux explains why not in this letter:
25 October 2009
Editor, The Boston Globe
Dear Editor:
Commenting on the number of people who refuse flu shots once they learn that
they must pay for them, Andre Laliberte writes that “People unwilling to cover
the costs of a shot that may prevent them from getting sick shows that the only
health care reform that some people want is one in which someone else pays for
it” (Letters, Oct. 25).
Sad but true. This parasitic attitude is the consequence of the chorus of
pundits and politicians who’ve long sung in unison that health care is a
“right.” Genuine rights – such as freedom of speech – are not commodities to be
purchased; nor does their existence require the on-going application of human
labor and other resources to ensure that they are adequately supplied.
Genuine rights are negative, in the sense that they demand only that each of us
refrains from harassing others. Because each unit of health care requires labor
and resources for its production, no one can have a ‘right’ to health-care in
the same way that she can have a right to speak freely or to worship the God of
her choice. Enforcing Jones’s ‘right’ to health care necessarily means forcing
Smith to work to produce this health care. A political ‘right’ that cannot even
in principle exist without the confiscation of persons’ labor and property is no
right at all; it’s a wrong.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
