My car won't start. My phone lost signal. My coffee is cold. I can't afford health insurance.

First world problems?

Let's just come out and say it: the Affordable Care Act (not-so-affectionately known as Obamacare) did not work. Premiums, rather than being lowered, doubled and in some cases tripled. The majority of health insurance providers folded. Now, if you can't afford to pay for health insurance, you have to pay a fee. Protecting the consumer from poor business practices (anyone up for a round of trust-busting?) was one thing, but this time around the good ol' government stuck its fingers a little too deep into the market pie and made a mess.

The new plan that recently made the rounds in Congress wasn't much better. It was muddled and confused and, thankfully, this one didn't pass. But at the end of the day, the central question of the healthcare debate remains a crucial one.

Is healthcare a right, or a privilege?

At first brunt, the response is that, why, of course it's a right! Everyone has a right to be healthy! And if it were as simple as that, then by golly it really, truthfully, honestly ought to be something to which everyone has access for little, or even no compensation.

But unfortunately, it's not. Because just like cellphones, and automobiles, and coffee machines, and ultra-pasteurized dairy products, modern medicine is a result of the modern world. The scientific miracles of Western medicine are possible because Western medicine expects experts. To become a licensed, independent physician in America, you're expected to spend as much time training for your field as you did training for college. And just as in any other field, experts cost money.

Independent of the cost of equipment, non-doctoral staffing, and maintenance of facilities as big as hospitals, that alone should answer the right/privilege debate. Doctors are, by and large, good people. They went through grueling training, work often-inconvenient hours, and deal with the harshest reality of humanity on a daily basis. If they just cared about the money, they would have been lawyers. And they could have, because they're brilliant.

But to expect healthcare as a right is to expect it to be provided for you. It is to disregard the incredible talents of the people working to keep you alive, and disrespect the hard work and passion they've put into getting where they are. Even maids expect to be paid for their services, and a new liver is a lot more valuable than a freshly-Swiffered floor.

I'm not saying healthcare should be ridiculously expensive. Martin Shkreli is a dirtball. But what I am saying is that modern medicine is not a one-way street. If you expect the plumber to unclog the drain, he expects to be paid for it. You have the right to live healthy, eat the right food, drink plenty of water, and get thirty to sixty minutes of exercise a day. You do not have the right to demand the services of trained professionals without proper compensation.

Living in a developed country means that you have access to the finer things in life, to modern conveniences that countries in other parts of the world only dream of; air conditioning, filtered water, refrigerators, nigh-ubiquitous private automobiles, and yes, modern medicine. First world privileges are wonderful things. But they are still privileges, and privileges are things earned, not demanded.