Argumentative Essay: Is Healthcare A Right?

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Is healthcare a right? Many people feel that it shouldn’t be because healthcare is not in the constitution. Others feel that since we have the means to provide health care for everyone we should do so. Many other countries around the world provide their citizens with health care. When discussing the right of healthcare often the topic of positive rights and negative rights enter the conversation and how healthcare effects those rights. Both sides make good points, however I feel health care should be given to all in a just society. I will argue that healthcare should be a right for all people and that many of the issues people have raised about how it is possible to do so in a free and just society can be dealt with. The issue of healthcare …show more content…

The positive rights require actions on the part of others. Negative rights require that others cannot be forced to do anything they don't want to do. Positive rights are accepted at the expense of negative rights. These rights cannot coexist because they are polar opposites of each other. Health care is a good example of positive and negative rights conflicting with one another. In order to fulfill this right, a doctor must be there to perform the medical procedures rather they want to or not. This inflicts upon the doctors negative rights. The doctor must also be paid for their work. This money for these services comes from other people who may not want their money being taken from them to pay for other people they don’t know, again inflicting upon their negative rights. Health care is a positive right because it comes at the expense of negative rights. Even though healthcare comes at the expense of some rights of some people the overall benefits it brings to a society are what is more important like the improvement to the overall health of society. Things like public housing, education, and the military are all things like healthcare that come at expense of some peoples negative rights but overall benefit society. Many people feel that health care is not a right and that in America it shouldn’t be implemented here for several reasons. One reason people are against it is because healthcare isn’t in the constitution. Another reason is the cost of healthcare on the government or lead to raising taxes. Some people will argue that it should be an someone’s own responsibility to get healthcare not the governments. There is also the fear that implementing a right to health care could lead the United States towards

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