Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the current US healthcare system, it’s horrible and riddled with perverse incentives, and should be mostly (if not entirely) nationalized. I’m just not sure how to justify the idea that healthcare is a “right”.
I know that sometimes people on the left draw a comparison to the right to a public defender. I’m not sure that argument really holds up though, because you only have the right to a public defender under the specific circumstance of being prosecuted by the government for a crime. The logic there is “if the government is going to significantly interfere with your life by arresting you and trying you for a crime, then it at least has to allow you to get legal defense from a qualified attorney, even if you need the government to pay for it.” There’s not, like, a right to a publicly paid lawyer for any and all purposes.
I would agree with you, with nitpicks. I agree that rights are historic products, they are created not in void and not from moral argument, but from power and class struggle which enshrined them in the concrete and specific material history we got. That there are ways to use power to not have them infringed that are codified in some way. In practice all rights are infringed constantly and no matter if "positive" or "negative" right they are socially created and mediated.
So history is more a product of class struggle than societies trying to maximize good for all its members, which is a slightly more idealistic/moralist take than I would do.
In a communist society however, when the labour and its organization is put under conscious control what you write might as well be seen as correct.
I completely agree that society exists because of other peoples' labor (ubuntu) and that includes the labour of our ancestors and material and social conditions they left over.
Well said