Tackling Healthcare Reform: Putting First Things First

Healthcare reform has become a hot topic in the last decade, especially with the installation of Obamacare. And yet, we as Americans are still severely lacking in health care coverage for large portions of the population. While healthcare reform is a necessary step to improving insurance coverage as well s the overall health of Americans, there are other steps that need to be taken before we tackle healthcare on it’s own. It is noted by the World Health Organization that healthcare coverage is a basic human right, but in the U.S., basic human rights are not necessarily a guarantee. Before we look at healthcare we have to look at what makes a person human, how this translates to the American Identity, and what human rights truly mean in the U.S. context.

In his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, Reid sets out to explore the models throughout the world that are working well, and sometimes not so well. In the second half of the book, we learn about Canada and their long waiting lists, China and how they messed up big time, India and how health care is “worth it,” and Taiwan and how change is possible.

After explaining the four models (Beveridge, Bismark, National Health Insurance, and Out-of-pocket) He sets out to show how those models work in real life. Certainly each model has it’s faults (some with worse health outcomes for their nations than others), he ends his book with some wise words, noting that healthcare reform is possible in the U.S., and that the myths holding us back need not hold us back any longer. In exploring the many different models, it is easy to focus on the vast differences between nations. However, there is an important central idea that is grappled with, which is the view that healthcare is a basic human right.

Marcus Davies, an official with a Canadian Medical Society said that Canada’s healthcare system “satisfies the basic collectivist spirit of the nation” (p. 128). Similarly, the Swiss believe in the notion of solidarité (much like the French), where everyone deserves basic human rights, health care being one of them. While this does say something about the spirit of Canada and Switzerland, I’m more interested in what it says about the American way. It seems that the U.S. doesn’t see health care as a human right based on the system that is in place now, but it almost seems as if nothing is seen as a human right in America. Instead, we view things as an American right under the guise of human rights. Stick with me here. We have all these rights and laws layed out, and they seemingly are rights that we all share, but history shows us that the more American you are (white, male, land owning, wealthy, intelligent, straight, etc.), the better protected you are by these rights. These identities are more American because the power and privilege they hold within the American society. For instance, African Americans, brought in by slave ships, were not even considered to be fully human until 1865, but still, African Americans are incarcerated at higher rates, abused by police more often, and attain higher degrees less often. Culturally, our laws have been rearranged and used as a means of social control that favors the more “desirable” American. Likewise, the LGBTQ community continues to fight for the “human rights” they deserve, but meet great opposition because they are really American Rights, and the LGBTQ community is somehow just not as American as they should be.

We see this trend reproduced in our health care system. Those who are “undesirable” Americans, because they are poor, have low paying jobs, or are sick, do not share the same luxuries that the wealthy and able-bodied do. In other words, the more American you are, the more you benefit from being an American. Which translates into the ways in which you are seen as human. Because being highly productive in the U.S. is something we deem as successful and important, you are somehow less American if you are less productive, therefore you are less protected by American Rights. Certainly it would make more sense to view things truly as human rights, which, as long as you are human, you deserve to have, but this method of generalizing the human race just doesn’t cut it in the U.S. Here, you get ahead by being different, and by being more productive than the others. Americans are basically agents for production. We don’t work as CEOs, Farmers, Teachers, etc. We ARE those roles. Our jobs are one of the most important pieces of our identities, and in submitting to being these agents of production, we relinquish our humanness for Americanness. But with this trade comes the possibility of not being American enough. For instance, those who have better jobs tend to have better health care, why? because they produce more valuable things to society. Sure, the person working in the factory to make those tiny plastic swords that go in your cocktails is making a great contribution to society, but they are expendible. Being expendible is totally un-American. The owner of that factory, however, produces output that is seen as much more valuable to society, thus making more money and obtaining better access to Health Care. Americanness is all about worth and status, and many times dumb luck, but it greatly affects how we experience “basic human rights” in this country.

As Reid has said, universal healthcare is a moral dilemma. As he presented in his last chapters, Americans aren’t terrible people, and most believe that we should all be equal, but believing and seeing are two different things. Many of us believe healthcare should be universal just as we believe everyone should be able to receive an education or marry who they would like, but those things are also still difficult for Americans to grasp. The U.S. could benefit greatly from healthcare reform, but first we must look at how we can go about moral reform, or else the healthcare reform is meaningless.