Here is a good question that arose during the Supreme Court presentations on Obamacare. Is healthcare a right? You know, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Like the rights spelled out in our Bill of Rights.

More to the point: Should it be free? After all, some folks cannot afford healthcare. If they cannot afford it, it ought to be free to them, right? Public education is. Because we figure that education is a right. So, should healthcare – bottom line – be free?

Suppose a person has no money. But she has the right to healthcare. Does that include a heart transplant? At humungous cost? If not, why not? I can think of any number of procedures and treatments that will cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep her alive. Is she entitled to them? How about a new hip at age 60? At 70? At 80? Is there a cutoff, when a “right” no longer exists?

This week students broke into a meeting of administrators at a California college. They demanded free college education. No fees. No tuition. Higher education is their right, they told the world. There are many who agree. College should be as free as public high school, they say.

I wonder. What if the guy wants to pursue a degree in playground supervising? (Some big college football players get such degrees.) Should he get a free four years? Wait, a free six years? Too many college kids take that long these days.

And if the idea is that education is a right and therefore free, how about masters’ degrees? And if they are free, why stop there? Some brainy people have two or three masters’ degrees. Should they be free? A masters’ often paves the way for a doctorate. Any reason why we should charge for this? If education is a right, why stop there?

Food, of course, is a right. Lots of people believe that. Food is so much of a right that we the people feed lunch to millions of students every day. We feed breakfast to millions. As well as afternoon snacks. And we dole out billions of dollars in food stamps.

If food is a right, why don’t we have government simply open up grocery stores and hand it out? Why bother with all the red tape associated with food stamps? Government could buy Walmart.