Review Of Papadimos Healthcare As A Right, Not A Privilege

In “Healthcare Access as a Right, Not a Privilege: A Construct of Western Thought”, Dr. Thomas J. Papadimos contends that healthcare access is not a sufficient response to the health needs of those with the means to access. In applying Utilitarian reasoning, Papadimos uses the philosophical foundation set forth by Western philosophers such as Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, Paine, Arendt, and Rawls to argue in favor in healthcare as a right. In this essay, I will provide reasons as to how healthcare as a right is wholly incompatible with what we know hold as truths concerning the characteristics of rights and why we are all better off when we are left to our own devices.

Dr. Papadimos invokes Aristotle’s idea of the human soul to profess the importance …show more content…
Oppression? What other state could we possibly be in if our self-defense and peace seeking has failed? We would be in a state of war in these conditions. Who shall have this “peace” if we succeed? Surely not the man has his right of labor taken away. If we are to submit our labor to the state for the sake of the collective, how will the newly created rights be divided? How can a right be shared if it is in possession of society? As we observe in our current state of affairs, we are already at peace without healthcare as a right. Because healthcare is incompatible with natural rights and laws of nature, the legislation of healthcare as a right paves the road to serfdom of all things pertaining to freedom—a road which Hobbes saw as inevitably …show more content…
Healthcare is a commodity. A commodity is either owned as property or procured by labor. We all have rights to property and labor, but we do not have the rights to the property or labor others. To claim ownership of one’s property is theft. The theft of this property places the rightful owner of this property under the power of the thief. The oppressed individual has now become a victim of the thief who has waged war against him and his rights. Because the state or collective is the thief, the rightful owner has to means of justice as he is under the power of the state, the judge and executioner of justice—powers endowed within the covenant. This breach of contract and the convent and failure to defend the rights of the individual places the state at war with its citizenry—a state in which the right to revolution may become realized. Suppose Dr. Papadimos rebukes by stating those who labor would be paid duly; we would see healthcare as a right has a stipulation of economic availability; this dependence on resources disqualifies healthcare as a natural right as it is upheld by monetary abundance—an aberration from nature. In times of economic turmoil, we would be unable execute our covenant. This theoretical state would be in eternal conflict with both nature and its civil duties when it infringes on the rights