Hospital Strikes Show Why Healthcare Is NOT a Right
During this month’s government shutdown, Bernie Sanders has been repeating the standard Progressive shibboleth: “Healthcare is a Right!” While this slogan appears to be sufficient to silence opposition, it does not receive sufficient examination. But as this month’s strike at Kaiser Permanente shows, union rights, another major Progressive cause, can and does trump the alleged right to medical services.
Sanders has spearheaded Democratic resistance to a Republican-sponsored continuing resolution which would have kept the federal government running after budget appropriations ran out on September 30. Their demands to reopen the government include a continuation of Biden-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies and a rollback to Medicaid cost savings measures in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And, yes, contrary to the claims of Sanders allies, the Medicaid funding restoration would result in more federal money supporting illegal alien healthcare.
In California, the powers that be seem animated by the belief that anyone able to cross the state or international border should get free healthcare. But providing this care means that California healthcare providers must have enough staff who are able and willing to serve whoever comes through the hospital’s or clinic’s door.
A five-day strike at Kaiser Permanente, California’s largest healthcare provider, calls into question the willingness of staff to serve patients under current working conditions. Healthcare unions explained that the strike was motivated by concerns over pay and appointment scheduling. In plain English, they want more money to serve fewer patients per day.
But the strike itself constituted a denial of patients’ putative right to healthcare. Kaiser was obliged to postpone non-emergency procedures until after the strike ended.
And the Kaiser strike is not exceptional. In 2025 alone, unionized healthcare workers struck against University of California healthcare, Santa Clara Medical Center, and West Anaheim Medical Center. Unions often cite a shortage of staff as a justification for their strikes, but the job actions further restrict patient access while they are underway.
If the state really believed in healthcare as a right, it would forbid nurses, aides, and orderlies from striking. Failing to do so deprives patients of care when they need it, and, to borrow from another discipline: healthcare delayed is healthcare denied.
Healthcare worker strikes and government’s unwillingness prevent them exposes the incoherence of the “healthcare as a right” construct. A true individual right is one that can be exercised without placing affirmative demands on others. No one must provide our right to speak freely or practice the religion of our choice. All the government has to do is get out of the way.
This is why free speech and religious freedom are real rights while the “right” to healthcare is confined to Sanders’ imagination.
Marc Joffe is a Visiting Fellow at California Policy Center and President of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association.