Right to medical care

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

A right to medical care would obligate the government or all people to respond to every illness and injury that occurs.

Other rights that obligate actions include the right to fair trial and right to education. However, in these two rights the people obligated to take action are obvious and their duties are sensible. In the right to fair trial, there is already a group of people involved such as the judge and the prosecutor, so naturally those people are charged with conducting a trial and conducting it fairly. In the right to education, the parents or guardians are the obvious people obligated to ensure their children receive an adequate education, with or without any external resources.

Unlike the right to a fair trial and right to education, there is no obvious set of people to obligate. Let’s consider an example. A hiker is adventuring in the country and suffers an accident such as twisting an ankle or being attacked by a wild animal. The hiker is then laying on the ground, injured and unable to move. The hiker cannot contact anyone and so nobody knows about this injury and nobody is there to provide medical care. Assuming there is a right to medical care, has the hiker’s right been violated? Is there an amount of time that can pass before the hiker’s right is considered violated? One minute after the injury? One hour after the injury? A day after the injury?

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