Health care is a human right, even in America

Vinay Prasad asks whether health care is a human right and, using some convoluted mental gymnastics, answers no with a disturbingly LLM-like turn of phrase: Health care, as it is practiced in 2026 America, is not a human right. It’s a tax penalty on our ignorance and wishful thinking. This is bullshit, in the classical sense. Not to psychoanalyze Vinay ⊕ [Note: The house style over here at Infinite Regress is to default to last names for any and all persons mentioned. I will on occasion make an exception for friends, which is indeed the case here. ] but this is what years of pandering to your ticket-paying audience will do to you: lose common sense. To be pedantic, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifically mentions the right to health, i.e., a minimum standard of health to which everyone is entitled. The minimum standard in America is prescribed by a single law, EMTALA, which guarantees the right to emergency treatment for those who seek it. It is a floor low enough to…