Should Healthcare Be Funded As A Basic Human Right?

This article looks at funding healthcare as a basic human right. It examines what is a basic human right. It looks at the need for re-examinaton of the health care system in the United States. Is health care a right or a privilege? By looking at the number of uninsured and who they are, we ask if everyone has the same access to health care. We examine traditional methods of funding and use the Medicare model as a framework. Nurses Activism Article

You are reading page 7 of Should Healthcare Be Funded As A Basic Human Right?

I might agree with people arguing against universal coverage if I didn't have thousands of dollars in income yanked from me each year. I have no children in school but a chunk of my taxes go to public schooling. Is that fair ? I don't begrudge other children an education but I work and cannot afford insurance for my family but I am essentially paying for someone else's child to attend school. It's backwards.

JudyGVA

1 Post

I find what most proponents of healthcare as a human right mean is that everyone should receive the top level of healthcare for free or a nominal cost. It does not, it means that everyone is forced to have the healthcare that the median citizen can afford, for the amount of money he pays. It means everyone is to die from the same fatal diseases that the inability to pay for treatment dooms lower-income patients to an early death or dimished quality of life. It means lower payments to doctors and fixed salaries and benefits for medical staff. It means no money for research to finance the development of new treatment methods. This is what happened in all the countries where it has been implemented so far. It won't be different here.

Actually I agree with a paid option and a free/low cost option. I believe in getting more if you work more. I just don't agree with no access for a sick person. I also believe in beggars can't be choosers and NO that doesn't include someone who has worked their entire life or been disabled fighting for their country.

MunoRN, RN

8,058 Posts

Specializes in Critical Care.
I have a question. As I type this it is 12:50 pm in my time zone. I am starting to get hungry, and plan to have lunch in a few minutes. Here is my question:

Do I have a right to eat food? After all, I will die without food much sooner than I would without healthcare, so the same argument should apply.

The answer is, yes, I do have a right to eat. However, that begs another question: Since I have a right to eat, are not the people posting in this blog obligated to take me to the grocery store and buy the food I need? Or, should I just be allowed to go to the grocery store and take whatever I want without paying. After all, it is my right, so you have to give it to me, right?

Wrong. My possession of a right to sustain my life with food does not obligate you to provide the means of enjoying that right out of your pocket. I have the right, but I still have to pay for what I need. This is the gaping flaw in the "healthcare is a basic human right" argument. Even if that proposition were true, it does not justify forcing my neighbor to provide me with the means to enjoy my rights by taking money that he has earned honestly away from him...

Our society does view food as a right, my money get taken away to pay for food stamps, mother/baby nutritional assistance, reduced/free school lunches, food subsidies etc.

Ntheboat2

366 Posts

Actually I think the problem is that we try and separate them too much. Morals are how determine rights. Not all moral beliefs are rights, but all rights are based in moral beliefs. It's morally good to help an old lady cross the street, but it's not a "right" in that someone is required to help her. It's also morally good not to punch that old lady in the face, however that is a moral belief that has risen to the level of "right". I think some would like to separate the two, and say no aspect of healthcare is a "right", yet there a clearly some aspects of healthcare that these same people would consider a moral requirement, but for whatever reason refuse acknowledge the moral requirements as "rights".

That reminds me of something Stephen Colbert said:

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it."

Love him.

"whatever reason" would be: MONEY. It's a right as long as it doesn't involve money.

VBRNJD99

17 Posts

In response to some posters, actually, one can die without medication much faster than without food. I believe medication falls under the umbrella of healthcare. There are many services that " my hard earned money" pays for that I haven't used. I'm sure some of the posters have used pell grants, subsidized and unsubsidized student loans, fire and emergency services, bridges, roads, phone poles, electricity, and courthouses. My tax dollars pay for farm subsidies, oil and gas subsidies, prisons, state, local and federal government. And in finitum. I pay for people I don't know to go to college, go to work, stay warm, travel, stay safe, etc. There are a lot of misconceptions about universal healthcare, about the cost, the quality of care, the wait for services, etc. The point is that no one should have to die in the street because they can't afford basic healthcare.

The next point is that ER services and emergency hospitalizations are not cost effective and are not basic healthcare. I have worked in the ER for many years and in LTC for many years, I have seen both ends of what happens to people who have no insurance, most of whom were like my parents, the working poor, lower middle class, hard workers, with no insurance.

Or people who fall on hard times, lose jobs, lose benefits take insulin every other day to make it last, lose their legs and kidneys. LTC for life. Or, take their htn meds 3x a week, massive CVA, LTC for life. And on and on. But yet, "healthcare" is too expensive, it's not a basic right.

Cost/benefit analysis; prevention much less expensive than catastrophic care plus extensive custodial care for years. Prevention for many still less expensive than catastrophic care, long term care.

In addition, healthcare is a business right now, CEOs getting rich off of the poor. RX too costly, procedures expensive, tests, etc. What about cost containment? What about price caps? The govt regulates meat, dairy, phone, electricity.

The constitution grants us the right to life, liberty, and property. Isn't access to physicians and medication part of the right to life? IMHO

M.Nurse

15 Posts

So how do you (and others agreeing with you) respond to those who have said IN THIS THREAD, that they can't afford healthcare, even though they are working, not sitting around waiting for a handout?

Well the whole problem with this entire, abliet multi-issued, arguement is both sides approach it as a black and white matter when in actuallity it is more of a grey area.

There are those who do indeed wish for nothing more then their welfare check and free handouts, are useless in general to society as well as never paying a cent in taxes. However, there also those who like many hardworking middle class Americans, cannot afford quality healthcare but because they make more money then X dollar amount they are disqualified from free healthcare as well. Both sets of individuals are not more diserving of more rights, liberties or quality of life then the other under our current system of acceptable social views.

The problem is really where do we draw the lines? Who do we leave out and let in? Who gets stuck with the check? There really is no perfect answer.

VBRNJD99

17 Posts

One additional point about National Health Systems, several of my physician and nursing friends have been concerned about their "standard of living." In Canada, and several European countries, the providers actually make more than physicians/nurses in the US (adjusting for COL), report a better non-monetary quality of life, and have a better work/life balance because of being government employees instead of corporate employees. I will post the link once I find it.

As far as research and development, the world health organization has a great website, as do the sites for the Canadian and European equivalents of the NIH.

Pets to People

131 Posts

The problem is really where do we draw the lines? Who do we leave out and let in? Who gets stuck with the check? There really is no perfect answer.

How about we all take care of each other and stop worrying about how much it's going to cost us? Maybe then we wouldn't have children starving to death while we throw enormous amounts of food in the garbage, or people dying of diseases we have medicine/cures for simply because they can't afford it...

What's really sad is that it is absolutely possible for there to be worldwide freedom from hunger, fear, poverty, most diseases and so on, but it will never happen because human beings are inherently selfish despite all those people who argue against evolution claiming that we are nothing like "monkeys" because of our higher intelligence, the most important of which is our ability to empatize, love and show compassion, yet we let our own people freeze to death on the street, let children starve to death, we fight with each over things that don't matter and it doesn't even have to be that way, we make it or allow it to be that way! But we can't change things because it's "too complicated", requires too much effort from us when we might have to miss the lates episode of American Idol or it might cost us a little extra in taxes even though we blow thousands each on nonsense items such as $800 purses and twenty pairs of shoes and eat out 5 days a week. Come on, do some of you people even listen to yourselves?

Our world is BROKEN people and it is only getting worse. You can't say you don't see it because it is right there in front of our faces everyday on the news, in the newspapers, the way we see other people behave these days and everytime we flip on any random channel on TV.

I find myself withdrawing more and more from society each year...within a few years I expect our farm to be completely self-dependent, we will have money and time set aside to help different local charities (because we ourselves had to learn how to work our way up from homeless and next year we will be college graduates thanks to help from only a few kind hearted people and government "handouts") but other than our few select friends, the only outside contact we will have to deal with will be employment. I don't even watch TV anymore, just movies with no commercials.

Sometimes my husband gets upset with me when I will take one of the only two dollars I have to bUy me something unimportant, like an energy drink or snack and give it to one of the random people begging on the corner by the local store. He says I've seen that guy at the store buying cigerettes or beer or whatever, and I tell him I don't care what he uses it for, he says he needs it and I have it so I GIVE IT, because others have given to me. I do not claim to be God so I cannot judge someone, I cannot claim to know someones life story or why the do or are the way they are...WHEN SOMEONE ASKS YOU FOR HELP YOU GIVE IT AND YOU DON'T ASK FOR ANYTHING IN RETURN, THAT'S THE MEANING OF GIVING!!!!!!!!!!!!

Specializes in Emergency Room, Hospice/Palliative Care.

Thank you for that article. I am stunned at some of the responses here. We work in the healthcare field. Do you even know how many people out there have 3 part time jobs to support their families, none of which offer healthcare. If they can barely make ends meet-how are they going to afford preventative medicine? How about those of us who have no insurance while in nursing school (half my class)? Too many people in this country file bankruptcy because of medical bills they cannot pay, although they would like to. Civilized countries (and some not so civilized) offer health care to their people. What is going on? Healthcare is not a handout. It's what we do to take care of each other.

Fuzzy

370 Posts

All I know is that now I can afford health insurance. I'm now insurable in spite of having a pre-existing condition that I happened to be born with. I was on disability for several years due to that pre-existing condition. I worked very hard to get back into the work force even tho that meant losing medicare. I did go bankrupt once because I couldn't afford the medical bills. Now I'm insured. We'll see how long...

Fuzzy

I would like to add that for most of my working life, my tax dollars have paid to other people's health insurance in the form of medicare, medicaid, etc. Yet I could not qualify for any of these programs because I chose to work for a living.

Ok, It's not that I'm trying to insult you, I swear I'm not but this is very naive. To be clear, it is not ONLY elderly and disabled citizens who stay on medicaid for a very long time. Many of the recipients are able bodied, but do all they can to stay on it. I'll visit this quote in detail in another post. I don't want to crowd this one.

Of course people try and take advantage of the system, I don't think anyone disagrees we should work to prevent this, but just preventing everyone from getting assistance isn't the answer. There are those who try and take advantage of the fact that we treat pain with opiates, does that mean we should stop treating patients in pain with opiates all together?

I never said we should prevent anyone from getting hospital care. I said they should be responsible for paying their own bill-even if it takes decades of payments. I just want them to take some ownership of it and not have it automatically paid in full by the rest of us. But the care itself should not be denied. If I led you (or anyone else here) to believe I thought this, I apologize.

That is a discussion for a different topic. I was simply addressing one of your comments. You lead me to believe that families of 4 who qualified for medicaid made $600 a month or less. I was simply bringing to your attention that the $600 a month is also (SIGNIFICANTLY) bolstered through other social programs.

Still not sure where you're going with that. You're argument seems to be that it's not really that bad that some families only make $600 a month since they also get government assistance, yet you also seem to be arguing that they shouldn't get government assistance.

It ties into my statement that "those who truly cannot afford healthcare insurance qualify for medicaid." Even if they have to make less than $600 a month to qualify, I was just saying that it is not as bad as it sounds because they have other assistance that is added to that $600. And in this thread, I'm arguing that EVERYONE ELSE should not automatically get free healthcare. I was saying that those who qualified for medicaid were already taken care of. I wasn't making an argument they shouldn't be, unless they were abusing the system by purposely doing little to keep qualifying for it.