[Homer_J_Simpson]

He explained further that the demand for social justice and human dignity includes a “right to health care but not the right to the government providing health care.”

How can you have one without the other? I don't see how you can have a "right" to goods and services.

[sitetest]

Dear Homer_J_Simpson,

It strikes me as a little silly to talk about a “right to health care,” as it's really part of a more basic right - the right to one’s property and the right to make use of one’s property as one sees fit to provide the means for one’s life and the lives of one’s family.

So, each person has a right to earn a living, the right to use one’s means to obtain the necessities of life, within the bounds of the moral law.

It no more means that the government has an unlimited obligation to provide those means anymore than the right to free expression means that government is obligated to buy one a printing press.

That being said, although the government doesn't have the right to pick our pockets to provide for those who can't provide for themselves (whether temporarily, or more long-term), we do have an obligation of charity toward those sufficiently less fortunate that they legitimately need our assistance to provide for the necessities of life, and woe to us if we make no effort to meet those needs.

sitetest

[Not gonna take it anymore]

“He explained further that the demand for social justice and human dignity includes a “right to health care but not the right to the government providing health care.”

He came back to this distinction during the Q & A period when he reminded the audience of the importance of subsidiarity as a political principle, one that is “often forgotten,” he said.”

That is how Catholic hospitals started. In local areas where the need was.

[Campion]

Think in a broader context. Terry Schiavo was denied her right to health care.

[RobbyS]

Everyone deserves to have health care, and we have a duty to give it. Which is why the Church established hospitals, and long before that Christians became known by the Roman people for their care for the sick. You don’t think that the Roman government cared for the sick do you? The first legal recognition of Christians by that Roman government, as distinct from the Jews, came for a group not unlike the Knights of Columbus, a mutual aid society that performed the corporal acts of mercy?