HEALTH AS A HUMAN RIGHT

Should Health Be Considered A Human Right?

Should Health Be Considered A Human Right?

Introduction

No issue surrounding U.S. health care is more basic or contentious than that of whether or not health care is a human right. European countries have long regarded it as such; this understanding is reflected in the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000). It was incorporated into the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Within both of America's nearest neighboring countries, Mexico and Canada, health care is regarded as a citizen's right and the government's responsibility.

Our nation's history is different from other nations', so it is perhaps not surprising that the United States, unlike other industrialized countries, has not implemented a universal, government-provided health-care system. It is worth remembering that our government is a federated system of fifty semi-independent states, and that most health-care regulation is carried out by those states rather than by the federal government. Some states provide government-funded health care to citizens who cannot otherwise find affordable insurance, thus putting those governments in a role similar to that played by the National Health Service in Canada. In more states than not, however, government provides health care only for indigent citizens through Medicaid, a jointly funded and administered, state and federal program. Otherwise, access to health care is a private matter between citizen and employer or citizen and insurance company. This paper discusses if health should be considered a human right or not.

Discussion

Unlike a great many other issues involving the health-care industry, health care as a basic human right seems to divide politicians, voters, and policy makers into only two camps: those who believe it is a right and those who believe that it is not. The liberal positions you will find in this chapter argue for visions of health care that range from those claiming that government is morally obliged to provide medical treatment to all U.S. residents to others that view the right to health care as including equal access to decent housing and decent food. Government, liberals contend, should be used to improve citizens' lives—and what could have a greater impact on people's happiness and productivity than adequate medical care? Because government could keep the significant (and growing) administrative costs of America's current patchwork of health-care systems lower than the many different corporations now administering benefits, scrutinizing applications, and managing care, liberals favor a single-payer system; they claim that it would keep costs down and make access more equitable. Liberals believe that government regulation is necessary to prevent health care from becoming just another industry in which market values—vertical integration, elimination of competition, selective denial of services, and deregulation—supersede those of fairness and universality. (Beatrix 2008)

Libertarians and conservatives, on the other hand, do not consider health care, or access to it, as a basic human right. While many of them deplore the limited access to care that America's present system of health care has produced, they favor market solutions to eliminate these ...