PHLB09H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Negative And Positive Rights, Rule Utilitarianism, Ontario Health Insurance Plan
Document Summary
Some people think it is having the right to any service that is medically necessary. This could quickly eat up all of canada s gdp. There would be no limits to health care spending. Most think that a right to health care doesn t meaning having a right to everything. Most philosophers think it should be a right to a decent minimum routine doctors visits, immunizations, hospital stays, but not rare and unusual medical treatments. In canada we have a system of universal health insurance; there is insurance from the provincial government. Philosophers distinguish between positive rights and negative rights. Right to free speech is generally thought to be negative right; all you have to do is refrain from trying to shut some one up and it imposes no positive things on anyone else. Right to life is a negative right because everyone has a right not to kill some one unjustly.