I ran across this tidbit from a while back:
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2315/2633 06 Jun 94 11:33:00
From:   Matt Zwolinski
To:     All
Subj:   Health Care is Not a Right
Attr:   
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Notice:  The following article is Copyright 1993 by Leonard Peikoff and
is being distributed by permission.  This article may be distributed
electronically provided that it not be altered in any manner whatsoever.
All notices including this notice must remain affixed to this article.


                      HEALTH CARE IS NOT A RIGHT
                       by Leonard Peikoff, Ph.D.

       Delivered at a Town Hall Meeting on the Clinton Health Plan
                    Red Lion Hotel, Costa Mesa CA
                         December 11, 1993

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen:

Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that
it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble
idea -- which just somehow does not work.  I do not agree that
socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical.  Of
course, it *is* impractical -- it does *not* work -- but I hold that it
is impractical *because* it is immoral.  This is not a case of noble in
theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and
*therefore* a disaster in practice.  So I'm going to leave it to other
speakers to concentrate on the practical flaws in the Clinton health
plan.  I want to focus on the moral issue at stake.  So long as people
believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to
fight it.  You cannot stop a noble plan -- not if it really is noble.
The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it -- to show that it is the
very opposite of noble.  Then at least you have a fighting chance.

What is morality in this context?  The American concept of it is
officially stated in the Declaration of Independence.  It upholds man's
unalienable, individual *rights.*  The term "rights," note, is a moral
(not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of
behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by
others, not interfered with -- and that anyone who violates a man's
rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.

Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights
to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.   That's all.
According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a
trip to Disneyland, or a meal at Mcdonald's, or a kidney dialysis (nor
with the 18th-century equivalent of these things).  We have certain
specific rights -- and only these.

Why *only* these?  Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing
in common:  they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people.
The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the
negative obligation to leave you alone.  The system guarantees you the
chance to work for what you want -- not to be given it without effort by
somebody else.

The right to life, e.g., does not mean that your neighbors have to
feed and clothe you; it means you have the right to earn your food and
clothes yourself, if necessary by a hard struggle, and that no one can
forcibly stop your struggle for these things or steal them from you if
and when you have achieved them.  In other words: you have the right to
act, and to keep the results of your actions, the products you make, to
keep them or to trade them with others, if you wish.  But you have no
right to the actions or products of others, except on terms to which
they voluntarily agree.

To take one more example: the right to the pursuit of happiness is
precisely that: the right to the *pursuit* -- to a certain type of
action on your part and its result -- not to any guarantee that other
people will make you happy or even try to do so.  Otherwise, there would
be no liberty in the country: if your mere desire for something,
anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have
no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty,
they cannot pursue *their* happiness.  Your "right" to happiness at
their expense means that they become rightless serfs, i.e., your slaves.
Your right to *anything* at others' expense means that they become
rightless.

That is why the U.S. system defines rights as it does, strictly as
the rights to action.  This was the approach that made the U.S. the
first truly free country in all world history -- and, soon afterwards,
as a result, the greatest country in history, the richest and the most
powerful.  It became the most powerful because its view of rights made

--- FleetStreet 1.19+