I am reading a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. and was struck by this comment of King’s:

[L]egislation and court orders tend only to declare rights; they can never thoroughly deliver them. Only when the people themselves begin to act are rights on paper given life blood.

King was, of course, talking about the need for nonviolent resistance to guarantee civil rights and I am not trying to attribute to him one position or another about health care. But, his statement points to the inherent difficulties of all positive rights. Once people themselves begin to act on a declared right to health care or housing or anything else that involves laying claim to scarce resources, they start infringing on others’ rights to the same resources.

King sought an equal right to eat at a lunch counter that had an open seat, not for the right to kick someone out of a seat, or to eat for free. All people in America have the right to see a doctor and receive care if they pay for that care. Those who say health care should be a right actually want state-paid health care to be a right. It cannot be.