Right to Live

I had a talk the other day with sarita where health care came up.  She said with sarcasm "yeah it's not like we have a right to live or something."  I was surprised at this being the perception of health care.
We do have a right to live.  That is to say, it is our right to not have anyone take our life from us.  We don't howerver have a right to be taken care of.  Our care is a personal responsibility. 

Rights are inseparably contingent on the understanding that we can have them on the basis of being responsible for the accompanying right.

This is where health care isn't a right.  When our health fails, it is either our own negligence or just bad luck that causes it to fail.  In neither of these is a person or even institution denying our right to live.

Obviously in extreme cases where we are poisoned or something like that, there's liability.  Erin Brokovich and all that.  But putting a healthy person on the hook for someone who gets lung cancer after smoking a pack a day for 20 years is unreasonable.  The same goes for a slew of other diseases.

The thought that the Federal government should be responsible for our health is, in my mind, another example of the mentality that they are our 'ultimate parents' who we run to whenever there's a perceived injustice.

It reminds me of my children yelling "NOT FAIR", when they have to do their homework instead of watch TV, or put the book down and go to sleep.  When will our social neoteny end, and we turn from dependence to accountability?