Rights are not contingent on consequences. So no, you cannot claim a country recognizes social rights just because it provides social services in order to achieve some kind of an outcome (e.g. to be a better competitor in the global economy).

Quote Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy View Post
Technically rights we're entitled to by merit of being a human being are termed 'human rights." That's one type of right, but it's not the only kind. Civil rights are distinct from human rights and then there are social rights, not generally recognized in the 1st world. *and of course there are different schemes of organization, like where the rights are thought to come from, like natural rights, legal rights (from the application of positivism) etc* You're laying out a natural rights framework and no, health care doesn't fit into that. Personally, I don't think it fits into human rights and certainly makes no sense as a civil right. You can make some sense of it as a social right with a slightly different parse, as the expectation of society that people within it be healthy. The UDHR does list health as a human right, but as even a cursory analysis of the document will reveal, it encompasses all kinds of rights plus the kitchen sink and so makes a very poor framework to hang anything on. It's a wishlist of all sorts of things the authors liked and thought people could/should/would have.
I think we can agree the concept of civil rights doesn't apply here. Regarding social rights: they are not a widely recognized category of rights and with the exception of socialist states, are not really acknowledged as being "rights". Yes, I am using the natural rights framework here, but that seemed to fit the context of how the people in this thread were treating the "right" to education.