A "Right" Doesn't Cost Someone Else Anything

Alden wrote: "I don't disagree with the premise that government cant adequately provide healthcare for everyone, but strongly disagree with it not being a right."

Alden, I am afraid that you do not know the meaning of a "right." A "right" is something that doesn't cost someone else anything. Your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness doesn't cost me anything. Your right to freedom of religion, speech, press, association, bear arms, to due process, to be safe in your person and property from unreasonable search and seizure, protection from taking without just compensation, freedom from the potentialities of double jeopardy, self-incrimination, cruel and unusual punishment, denial of habeas corpus, bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, direct capitation taxation other than income taxes, protection from slavery and indentured servitude, equality under the law, etc. These do not cost me anything. They do not cost anyone else anything.

You do not have a right, per Supreme Court decisions, to:

1. Social Security, Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960)

2. Medicare, and, by extension, healthcare, Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U.S. 602 (1984)

3. Patients whose medical care is provided by public funds have no constitutional right to whatever care [their physicians] using "the highest standards of medical practice"...may "judge necessary"... or to obtain that care "from a physician ... of their choice," AAPS v. Weinberger, 395 F. Supp. 125 (1975).  This case is an appellate court decision on which the Supreme Court denied cert; thus, the ruling stands.

4. A Medicare beneficiary may not even spend his own money to buy a service that Medicare regulations say is "unnecessary", New York State Ophthalmological Society v. Bowen, 861 F.2d 1283 (1988).  This case is an appellate court decision on which the Supreme Court denied cert; thus, the ruling stands.

5. No constitutionally-protected right to vote, per se, Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 336 (1972)

6. There is no right to public education, San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 35 (1973)

7. There is no right to food. If the Federal government can prevent a farmer from growing food for his own family, then you have no right to food, Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)

8. There is no right to housing, Lindsay v. Normet, 405 U.S. 56 (1972)

9. There is no right to a job. You have certain rights in employment, but no right to be employed. Innumerable cases.

An employer has the right to terminate employment, but the employee doesn’t have a right to a job, Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968); Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977); Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 146 (1983); Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378 (1987); Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006); Branti v. Finkel, 445 U. S. 507 (1980), among others.

10. There is no right to welfare, Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970)

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."

- Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

Your "right" may not cost another man anything, including his nose.