Is Health Care A Human Right? It Should Be.

In The Healing of America, T.R. Reid poses the question “Is health care a human right?” (214). The U.S. says that they allow all of their citizens to have the right to life, but a 2009 study found that 45,000 deaths annually in the U.S. are linked to a lack of health insurance. So while I would like to believe that equal access to healthcare would align with the overarching goals of the United States, it seems to me that it doesn't.

The U.S. Department of State describes on their website that, “The United States understands that the existence of human rights helps secure the peace, deter aggression, promote the rule of the law, combat crime and corruption, strengthen democracies, and prevent humanitarian crises.” One of these human rights is that “All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights… Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person.” The United States claims to endow all of its citizens with basic human rights, while leaving millions of its resident’s uninsured and with no access to health care. This means that anyone working class who doesn’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford health insurance is hung out to dry. That sounds like a humanitarian crisis to me.

Let’s first look at the “security of person” part of the above statement. In the United States, we have the right to speak freely and practice any religion. We have the right to education (through the public school system), and to not have cruel and unusual punishment inflicted. We have all of these rights in place to allow people to live freely and with equal opportunities. Yet it is not equal opportunity if people are dying of preventable diseases simply because they cannot afford to pay for medical treatment. It is not equal opportunity if someone has to spend all of their money paying for medical bills. A 2013 study showed that medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. If the United States wants to live up to its promise of allowing people to be secure, it needs to provide the opportunity for people to live their lives without constant fear of getting sick and not being able to pay for medication. It needs to help people avoid getting sick by providing insurance so that people can get physicals. Nobody can be secure when they are constantly fearing for their health or dealing with the stress of medical bills.

Next, let’s examine that “liberty” part of the aforementioned human right. If Nikki White who we met at the beginning of The Healing of America had been given access to the health care that she needed, she wouldn’t have been holed up in her mother’s house, too sick to work and too poor to afford treatment. She would have had the freedom to go out and be a contributing member of society, but that liberty was taken away when the government decided that it would not provide her with the resources to treat her very treatable illness. A country doesn’t really have liberty when people have their freedom taken away because of a lack of medical care. If Nikki White had been able to get access to treatment, she would have had the opportunity to live a normal lifespan. But that liberty was not given to her.

Lastly, let’s look at the first part of “life, liberty, and the security of person:” Life. Because for someone to have a life, they need access to the means to stay alive. In the case of Charlene Dill, a single mother of three, working three jobs still was not enough to provide for her family and pay for her medical care, and she died of a heart condition. Dill will never get to see her children grow up and will never again be able to speak freely or educate herself further or do any of the things that she may have wanted to do. This all happened because she made too much money to qualify for Medicaid; Dill made about only $9,000 a year. At the age of 32, Charlene Dill’s life ended because her meager income was too much by government standards to qualify for any sort of assistance to pay for the cost of medicine, ultimately leading to her death.

So why is health care a human right? Providing all citizens with healthcare means that everyone who lives in the United States has the opportunity to actually live. At the very least, health care is a gateway human right; it allows for people to live a life in a way that enables them to speak freely and practice religion and get an education. It also allows them to be contributing members of society. If the U.S. really wants to stick to its claim that it protects human rights, then it needs to start with health care. And to answer Reid’s question of if health care is a human right: as of now it does not seem to be, but it definitely should be.