My feelings about the "right" to health care

Here's the thing about saying that health care is a right. Rights are things that someone cannot tell you not to do, generally speaking. Take for instance, the right to free speech. The way that right works, is that people have a right to speak their minds about things. It doesn't create an obligation for anyone to listen, for anyone to provide a venue for a person to speak, or provide the means for a person to publish things. It merely states that a person can do so, and the government and by extension other people cannot really stop a person from doing so as long as the person does not infringe on the rights of anyone else, for example, by trespassing or spray painting the message one someone's garage door. This is a right that requires inaction by everyone for it not to be infringed, which is generally what a right means.

However, that is not true for health care. With health care, instead of a right requiring inaction by others to not be infringed, this right requires action by others, and in fact it creates an obligation by someone else to act regardless of that person's feelings in the matter. This is because health care is a service provided by people. If you create a right to a service provided by people, then people have an obligation to provide that service. If people have an obligation to provide that service, you then create a condition of involuntary servitude of the people of the class that provide that service. In this case, it would be health care professionals. There's more to it than that, though. If you can force people to provide a health care through government regulation regardless of their feelings about the matter and whether or not they are getting paid for it, then when people decide not to go into the health care field because the expense of entering the health care field is not outweighed by the income (i.e. a doctor cannot repay student loans) then surely the government can also force people to enter the health care field, after all, people have a right to health care.

The 13th Amendment

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

That's the thirteenth amendment to the US Constitution.

What's really interesting about that is how certain types of medical professionals, notably chiropractors are required to accept the government insurance. Doctors of oral surgery, physical therapists, and occupational therapists also cannot opt out of medicare, so they are required to accept medicare patients. They don't have to accept patients with any other insurance, but the government says that they have to take medicare.

If you're forced to accept patients with government insurance that show up at your door, how is that not involuntary servitude?

It's probably only going to be a matter of time before the government mandates that the doctors take all of the crappy government insurance. Stupid politicians.