Discuss whether health care is a public or a private good.

To an economist, a public good is a product or service that exists for everyone, and if one person benefits from it, s/he does not reduce its availability or value to others. Traditional examples are air, highways, military defense and, yes, healthcare. A private good is one that is in limited supply, to which one can attach ownership, and that not everyone has a right to. A car is a private good. 

Economists used to see a clear distinction between public and private goods, but then the concept of "common goods" crept in. These are goods that are shared like a public good, but that may really be limited in supply. Air and water pollution, gridlocked highways, and slow police response times are all manifestations of common goods. 

Now, let's consider healthcare. One can make healthcare available to all, but the funds to pay for it are limited. Insurance companies think of healthcare as a private good for which you have to pay them for access. The government uses Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act to make healthcare more of a public good. Medical research is close to a public good because it benefits everyone equally, but kidney transplants are in limited supply and benefit only a few. In countries with national healthcare plans, such as Canada, healthcare may not be in as abundant a supply as in the United States, so even though healthcare is paid for, a patient may have to wait longer for care or not be eligible for some treatments. In short, there's a broad gray area between public goods and private goods, and healthcare tends to fall into that gray area.