Human Rights And The Right To Health Care

Abstract

INTRODUCTION I speak of human rights rather than moral rights because what I am referring to is distinctly human, whereas moral rights, at least for some people, are possessed by animals. In addition, being treated fairly, or as an end not solely as a means, or having promises kept, are moral rights, but they are not distinctly human rights according to my proposed thesis. My analysis will concern itself only with those human rights that are attributable to the born. The purported rights of the unborn, which have been espoused in contemporary discussions, will not figure in this essay because the issue of their existence is so in dispute that we are unable to settle the question whether the unborn have any rights, or if they do, whether these constitute human rights. My main objectives in this essay are twofold. First, I will offer an original account of human rights that attempts to answer the question, “What does it mean to say that a person has a human right?” This account will be based on a social contract perspective and will make specific reference to the notion of adequate compensation. It will disavow any appeal to God or to a God-centered natural law, and it will not rely upon some special view of human nature. My second objective is to determine that there is a human right to health care as based upon my general conception of human rights. Once this first objective has been achieved, I will identify the specific human rights that emerge. Some, such as the right to life, freedom or liberty, have traditionally been recognized. However, the purported right to property, espoused by John Locke and included in the Virginia Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is an extremely restricted human right. The right to health care, which is included in the United Nations Declaration and the right to die which is not, as far as I know, included in any list, are human rights according to my analysis. I begin with an historical survey of natural rights, or human rights as they are called today. I conclude this survey by conceiving of human rights as a claim against the world which is based upon some basic human need or interest. This is not an original view. What is novel is my use of the notion of adequate compensation as a necessary condition for the existence of a human right. This notion emerged from Jean Jacques Rousseau’s discussion of slavery in Book I, Chapter III of his Social Contract. But, it is not at all clear that Rousseau recognized the existence of human rights or natural rights as he would be wont to call them. In any case, the notion of