If we’re going to insist on this brand of personal responsibility in health care, it’s time to turn a blind eye to folks who die in the streets for lack of adequate health care.

Sometimes, personal responsibility means your responsibility to hold up your end of the community. (Community–that’s what we call it when a lot of people live together and form a nation-state). It’s *not* exhibiting personal responsibility to lack health care coverage, but the system is currently set up such that two things are true: many people can’t afford it, and those people tend to get some health care anyway at the expense of others.

So the question is this. Is health care a right or a privilege? I would argue that it’s a right with an implied responsibility.