[efa]

I hate the constant misuse of the word "right". How would a country guarantee this right? What if every doctor in the US quit tomorrow? What if I decided to live on the top of a mountain where there is no population? How does the government guarantee my right to healthcare? Rights are around restrictions. I have the right NOT to be killed. I have a right NOT to be silenced. When something requires someone else doing something and giving it to me - that can't be a right.

[bduerst]

There are no natural rights - i.e. the ocean won't push you to shore because you're drowning and have the right to life.

Rights are defined as part of the social contract we create in living close proximity to each other. If the collective people define what their rights are through democratic representation, then it's up to those who have the monopoly on violence to enforce it.

The "Stand in the school house door" is one historical example of this in play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_in_the_Schoolhouse_Door

[jxramos]

Negative rights seem to be those more amenable to guarantees since they ask little. The guarantee of positive rights assumes a bunch of prerequisites from what I understand (some of which like healthcare are predicated on a ton of upfront infrastructure and training and availability and so forth). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

[homonculus1]

"Positive right" is just political marketing for privileges. Universality is implicit in the notion of rights, e.g. treatment that every human has a valid claim not to be subjected to and which must be observed in order to have a civil, liberal society. The enumeration of specific protections may have to change with technology, but the underlying principles do not short of radical psychological/physiological alteration as a species. If we abandon that concept then rights have no meaning, they're just a list of popular demands which can shift arbitrarily, and including privileges does just that.

It's obvious why people are in favor of them of course, but we have to be honest about what it is we're asking for and why instead so we can make a rational analysis of it, instead of torturing the intellectual and moral foundations of our culture to make something outside of it fit. And it's foolish not to be suspicious that politicians' incentives have basically everything to do with making promises that get votes, and basically nothing to do with actually making the system work long-term.

[delecti]

Who's going to stop you from having your right not to be killed infringed upon? That requires just as much affirmative action from a society's justice system. Any of our rights only matter as much as society's agreement to help you defend them, and in this case the government of Illinois has agreed to defend this one.

[jwbwater]

People not killing each other costs nothing. Cost is only incurred when the right to life is infringed. People providing healthcare to one another always has costs. If this "right" is infringed and no healthcare is provided then no cost is incurred.

Whether or not healthcare is a right is a lot less important than whether or not it is affordable.

[creaghpatr]

>How would a country guarantee this right?

Via its taxpayers of course.

[efa]

And if no is willing to provide the healthcare? Force them?