Health Care is Not a "Right?"

Read this over at NRO. Allow me to sketch some thoughts off the top of my head (a rough thesis bouncing around):

First off, no one argued that health care was a right under the Constitution (and that's not what Brokaw asked in the debate). However, assuming that's what we're talking abou, no one believes that the Constitution depicted the end-all-be-all (to use a Palin phrase) of rights. Lots of people look at the constitution as naming "negative rights" - what the gov't can't do (as the author points out) - but not address "positive rights" of which health care would be a part. Futhermore, the 10th Amendment reserves all other rights not delegated to the Feds are reserved to the States - this implicitly acknowledges that there are rights other than those expressed in the Constitution. Healthcare could be of this sort.

Second. You could interpret healthcare as a human right. I recognize the watering-down effect of tossing around "rights", but at the same time, we can recognize the existence of rights outside of a legal or constitutional framework. I think healthcare would be among these ... along with rights to life, dignity, work, expression, etc.

Lastly, rights, by definition aren't necessarily essential for survivial (i.e. food, like the author brings up) in a Maslow's heirarchy of needs sense ... rights aren't those things that enable survival (though they may exist in a state of nature) - but rights are those that are recognized and helped defined by civilizations...