Since the earliest days of mankind, cultures and civilizations have sought an evolving understanding of what it means to be healthy. From praying for favors with deities to Hippocrates' beliefs, the introduction of healthcare as a universal right was nonexistent in ancient societies. Only after industrialization did it become proposed as such. In the modern world, the right to maintain health and prevent illness is one of the most important topics related to an individual's living conditions. For the author, healthcare should be considered a positive right (i.e., people are entitled to be provided healthcare), rather than a privilege, due to its practicality and consideration for the entire society.
To assess this problem, one should first define the three keywords mentioned in the question. i.e., Healthcare, human rights, and privileges.
The definition of healthcare embodies certain key characteristics. According to Faulkner and Nicolson1, Healthcare was “the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease, illness, injury and other physical and mental impairments in humans.” In Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was proposed that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food… and the right to security in… or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” 2According to Merriam-Webster, in the sense of the action, Healthcare is “efforts made to maintain, restore, or promote someone’s physical, mental, or emotional well-being, especially when performed by licensed professionals.”3 To conclude, healthcare should be regarded as the universal means to prevent ailments and provide the necessary assistance to those in need of professional service.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Rights are “Entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states; or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or (not) be in certain states.” 4In a stricter sense, a right could be understood as a claim. In that case, as Finnis points out, the differences between a claim and a privilege(liberty) are by definition:
1. A has a claim-right that B should f, if and only if B has a duty to A to f.
2. B has a liberty (relative to A) to f, if and only if A has no-claim-right (‘a no-right) that B should not f.
(2’) B has a liberty (relative to A) not to f, if and only if A has no-claim-right (‘a no right’) that B should f. 5
It is to be noticed that each relationship consists of three elements, which are of two persons A and B, and, most importantly, the action f. However, for claim-rights, a duty was imposed on someone else. While for liberties, a duty is removed from the right-holder, and a non-right is given to others. This illustrates a key difference between liberties and claims. In the Hohfeldian system, a claim can be depicted as an active right, for which only the owner needs to take action to enforce their right. Meanwhile, the claim can be a passive right, for which the actions of others are regulated to fulfill the interest of the claim-owner. In the subsequent paragraphs, the paper attempts to demonstrate that the right to healthcare is a passive, positive right, and. therefore necessarily a claim-right.
Why was healthcare a passive right? Suppose healthcare is an active right (i.e. patients have the freedom to choose whether to enjoy medical care or not, and the best others can do is not to prevent them), there would be several contradictions. Firstly, there would be difficulty concerning the provision of healthcare. Although the concept of people actively seeking out the source and service of healthcare they need might seem promising, they as individuals might not be able to access healthcare in the first place. The modern health system is a complex network of medical professionals, equipment, sites, and research. Its application and coverage depended on quite material reasons, such as logistics and costs, to a great extent that individuals can not manage by themselves alone. Moreover, if right-owners propose unattainable needs, it would impose impossible obligations on the medical institute and the state, restricted by limited resources. Therefore, simply being willing to improve one’s health falls short of offering available effective solutions to patients.
One might still argue that healthcare is feasible without a health system. However, defining healthcare as an active right would negate the need for all obligations to provide it. Imagine patients eager for treatment finding themselves in a natural state, that is, before medicine was invented or developed. Their well-being needs, except for those who are willing to accept a life expectancy of around forty years while facing constant threats from contaminated water, lack of food, and diseases, should hardly be fulfilled. Without seriously considering healthcare as a duty which could not be provided without the support of the whole society and technological developments, demands for it could not override obligations.
In addition, healthcare should not only be a passive right (thereby excluding it from being a privilege), but also a positive right. Society must extend beyond non-interference in its citizens’ access to health care and positively take up the duty to provide care and ensure access to medical resources regardless of social class or wealth. Firstly, it could reduce costs for society as a whole. For example, vaccinating not only prevents the individual from contracting a disease, but also provides immunity for the entire community as well. Its positive externality benefits everyone. Actively sorting out cases of ailments to distribute them to experienced professionals could also increase efficiency in diagnosing and treating cases due to specialization. In conclusion, taking up the duty of healthcare actively should be beneficial for the entire society economically.
Apart from the economic gains at a societal level, treating healthcare as a positive right is fundamental for human dignity. As the Universal Declaration for Human Rights states, humans “are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Human dignity means that everyone has inherent worth and deserves to live a fulfilling life. That said, the vulnerability of human lives due to illness and other calamities often disables humans from achieving their potential. Behind the Veil of Ignorance, it is important to ensure that everyone can receive at least some basic form of medical equality so that individuals can be treated with respect and have the opportunity to pursue their goals equally. Although the ultimate end for the right to healthcare must be the equal, high-quality treatment of ailments for all, one must admit that healthcare in our time has been limited by the difference in wealth, prestige and social status of the patient. In this case, the inequality can be best perceived as an existing manifest to maximise total utility under our current stage of development, one that still falls short of an idealized, perfect implementation of affording healthcare as a passive positive right. As succinctly proposed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone should be entitled to a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.”
To put it in a nutshell, healthcare should be considered a right, not a privilege, due to the necessary function of the health system and the betterment of the human condition. Moreover, regarding healthcare as a positive right, sought out through government sponsorship, provides benefits for society in both economic and humanistic terms.
References:
1. Faulkner, A., and M. Nicholson. “Healthcare.” In Data-Centric Safety, 387–411. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-820790-1.00043-7.
2. United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted December 10, 1948. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.
3. health care. (2025). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/healthcare
4. Rights (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (2025, June 7). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/#PriLib
5. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A RIGHT AND a LIBERTY by Prof. William E. May. (n.d.). https://web.archive.org/web/20190128064105/http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/may/rights.html