Very few people in the U.S. fully oppose a positive right to health-care though. They're against a positive right to see a doctor and get regular treatment, but are in favor of a positive right to receive emergency-room care if necessary. Hence, ERs are required to treat heart-attack and stroke patients who show up on their doorstep, even if the victim is uninsured and has no ability to pay; turning them away is illegal.

So the question isn't over whether there's a positive right to health care--- almost everyone agrees there is to some extent. The disagreement is over which kinds of care are included in the right.

The deeper problem here may be though that treating an emergency patient that is dying thus requiring immediate care they can't afford could run higher costs that the appropriate preventative treatment they were unable to afford.

Morally we are obligated to save the emergency patients life but also morally we shouldn't have let their condition slip to the point it is in.

> most aren't against providing healthcare through non-coercive means such as private charity

I've never been able to give that a more benign reading than "as long as it doesn't cost anyone enough to seriously affect the problem". I'd rather be required to pay to keep society at least minimally humane, than voluntarily pay for gates and guards to protect me from the poor, desperate, and angry.

So, you'd classify a right to the belongings of others as a positive right?

Yes, positive rights are claims that someone can make against another -- I have a right to food, you must provide it for me, etc. In this case, I have a right to healthcare, you must provide it for me.

From wikipedia:

Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group—a government, for example—usually in the form of abuse or coercion. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action of another person or group. In theory, a negative right forbids others from acting against the right holder, while a positive right obligates others to act with respect to the right holder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

"I am a citizen, you must hold (if you are the government) or fund (if you are a taxpayer) an election for me to vote in."

What's your feeling on that positive right? I've encountered people who argue against democracy, and I've encountered people who will re-word the right as stated above and then call it a negative right. I disagree with the former, and the latter only succeed in demonstrating that the difference between positive and negative rights is one of phrasing, and not of the right itself. Do you have a different take on the matter?

So all people have the right to have all people provide their material needs. Seems unworkable to me. Maybe it just works for parasites.