“The causes of the present crisis in medical care, namely, its runaway cost, which the Clinton plan is intended to address, can all be subsumed under one essential heading: the government’s violation and/or perversion of the individual’s actual, rational right to medical care.”
that about sums up the article IMO.
“In exactly the same way, the right to medical care does not mean a right to medical care as such, but to the medical care one can buy from willing providers. One’s right to medical care is violated not when there is medical care that one cannot afford to buy, but when there is medical care that one could afford to buy if one were not prevented from doing so by the initiation of physical force. It is violated by medical licensing legislation and by every other form of legislation and regulation that artificially raises the cost of medical care and thereby prevents people from obtaining the medical care they otherwise could have obtained from willing providers. The precise nature of such legislation and regulation we shall see in detail, in due course.”
“This then is the concept of rights, and specifically of rights to things, that I uphold. One’s rights to things are rights only to things one can obtain in free trade, with the voluntary consent of those who are to provide them. All such rights are predicated upon full respect for the persons and property of others. This is the concept of rights appropriate to rational human beings living in a civilized society. Henceforth, I shall refer to it as the rational concept of rights.”
that about sums up the article IMO.
I beg to differ.
...the alleged right to medical care as such implies an alleged right to force others to pay for one's medical care against their will or to force the providers of medical care, such as doctors and hospitals, to provide it against their will.
I, of course, could be wrong, but I think that sums up the article. I also love the term "alleged right."