(Bloomberg View) — Is there a right to health care? Our arguments about health policy frequently highlight the question. The liberals at Slate magazine have answered yes, and the conservatives at the American Spectator have said no. Actress Laura Dern has affirmed such a right, and Republican Rep. Raul Labrador denied it. Miss USA has been on both sides of the question. And all of this was just in May.
As much as people argue about it, it's not a very good question — not, at least, in our society, in which nearly everyone agrees that all people must have access to some basic level of health care. Because of that consensus, conservatives who deny a right to health care don't really mean it, and liberals who affirm it can't use it to clinch the case for their favored policies.
One problem is that the word "rights" can be understood in many ways. Fairly often it refers to "negative" rights: The right to speak freely is a right to speak without being subjected to government interference or to violence. Any right to health care would by contrast be a "positive" right. When we are thinking about positive rights, we sometimes have in mind enforceable claims to governmental provision of a good, service or asset. Almost all senior citizens in America have this kind of legal right to a Social Security check.
But positive rights do not always have this character. The Catholic Church, for example, affirms a right to education, but clearly does not mean that the government must directly supply schooling to all children. It would prefer to provide that education to many children itself, or through affiliated organizations, and opposes any "school monopoly" held by the government.
Catholic teaching has also sometimes endorsed a right to medical care, as in the 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris. But the catechism dispenses with the language of rights in rendering the point: "Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living — conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance."
The church, in my admittedly biased view, gets this right: The "right to health care," properly understood, means that public authorities have a duty to foster conditions in which all people's medical needs are met. There are, however, a variety of ways governments can meet this obligation.
