Today's Facebook meme of the day happens to be "No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick." This is a bold statement, which sounds nice, but upon further review falls as flat as "Hope" and "Yes we can" and similar political reductionisms. It refuses to even address the issue of WHY human beings are entitled to these rights.
The question of what is, and what isn't a Human right is a philosophical one; by definition, any entitlement demands a logical justification, or is in fact an article of faith. Of course, one can religiously (and irrationally) believe that Humans are inherently valuable, which would grant them a positive right to be helped by others when they can't help themselves. I won't get into the absurdity of religious views right now, except of course to note that they are, in fact, absurd.
The real question is what if Humans are Not inherently valuable?.. What then would be the rights we are entitled to? While the easy answer is "none", it is not the only or even most logical answer. The Declaration states that we are entitled, by Nature and Nature's God, to the self-evident and unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. One might say, wait a second, isn't that a religious argument to begin with? I would argue that it is not inherently religious (just like the men who wrote it), and is based on a comprehensive analysis of what it means to be Human.
The words "Nature" and "self-evident" point out the concept that something unique in the Nature of Homo Sapiens that gives us rights with respect to other members of our species, but not with respect to our Creator (whether you believe it is the Flying Spaghetti Monster or DNA by natural selection). Humans are born Free, because they are endowed with the ability to Reason and make decisions for themselves. For one (or more) human beings to take this away from others violates the laws of Nature. Forcing people to help others, for example via tax-funded healthcare, takes away our inherent right to Liberty to provide a very different set of rights.
The technical term for these two types of rights are negative liberty (rights that can only be taken away by government), and positive liberty (rights that must be given by government). My view, which is derived from the Declaration, is that negative liberty must be protected By the government and From the government. Government subsidization of healthcare infringes on negative liberty, and therefore does not fit neatly into the American system and cannot be considered a Human right.
