1. In this essay I use the phrase “health care” mainly to refer to services provided by physicians and other health care professionals. Medicine and nursing are primary components of health care.
2. Another major issue is the weight or stringency of the obligation to provide or the right to receive health care, but I will not address this issue, assuming against libertarians that it is sometimes justified for the democratic society to take individuals’ property through taxation in order to benefit other individuals in the society. Thus, I will not examine the weight or content of various liberties that many claim as rights. 3See Charles Fried, “Rights and Medical Care—Beyond Equity and Effi ciency,” New England Journal of Medicine 293, July 31, 1975, 242.
3. President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Securing Access to Health Care, Vol. 1: Report (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, March, 1983), p. 34.
4. For an analysis of rights as justified claims, see Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 49–55. Joel Feinberg prefers the narrower term “validity” over the broader term “justification.” Validity is justification within a system of rules. See Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 67.
5. David Braybrooke, “The Firm but Untidy Correlativity of Rights and Obligations,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1, March 1972: 351–363. I will use the terms “obligation” and “duty” interchangeably in this essay.