Greed Over Basic Human Rights

In 2010, Obama signed a reform bill that would transform hospitals and primary physicians to provide better health outcomes at lower costs for Americans. The reform bill, known as Obamacare, would give America’s healthcare system a massive renovation that would require all insurance companies to accept all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions. Sixteen million uninsured Americans would now receive health insurance in the United States. Yet, many researchers have argued that the uninsured were not the ones to benefit most from the new bill. Due to greed and capitalism, the price of healthcare would remain relatively expensive for many individuals and the healthcare industry would remain a high profit industry. Healthcare providers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies remain free to set their prices and fees as they see fit.

Around the rest of the developed world, healthcare is seen as a basic human right. A right that is distributed to individuals affordably and effectively. Yet, many Americans still face the hardships of inequalities in the healthcare system. After reading the latter part of T. R Reid’s The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer health Care, it has become clearly evident that many countries around the world have made a moral decision of providing healthcare to all of their citizens in an affordable and accessible manner. Every other country, except America keeps health costs down to not bankrupt its citizens. In Canada, Supreme Court Justice Emmett Hall states, “Economic growth is not the sole aim of our society. The value of a human life must be decided without regard to… economic considerations. We must take into account the human and spiritual aspects involved” (p. 133). In other words, unlike Canada, America’s healthcare system is set up to be purchased as a commodity. The Taiwanese natives discussed the American healthcare system as not really being a system at all. Instead it’s a market that people with money can buy what they need and many people are left out in the cold. Because America has built a healthcare system that discriminates on the basis of wealth, it has become a prime example of our morals.

America runs on capitalism, if there is a way to make profit, someone will come along and figure out a way to earn money. Unfortunately, healthcare has skyrocketed as a profit making business. Hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical, and medical technology companies are receiving large profits, sometimes at the expense of their patients. Here in America, the technologies that were once invented to save lives have been turned against us in the form of capitalism. Unlike other country’s medical models, there are not any set prices, so insurance and pharmaceutical companies are able to set their prices as high as they would like. For the consumer this leaves a form of uncertainty, patients are unable to compare prices leaving them in the dark and possibly broke. In 2014, 33 million Americans, 10.4 percent of the population remained uninsured. The majority of individuals who remain uninsured cite the high price of insurance as the main reason they lack coverage.

The Healthcare system should be set up to prevent, diagnose, treat, and cure disease. With Obamacare turning 5 this month, it is clear that it has fallen short. Due to America’s capitalistic morals, America’s healthcare system remains a business opportunity to elitist America. Instead of being seen as consumers, patients should be given their basic human right and be treated with the fairness of other country’s healthcare. In Sweden, their core national values are solidarity, community, and equality. For the Swiss solidarity means everyone has equal access to basic rights, which means everyone is entitled to access to medical care. While Obamacare has opened opportunities for individuals that were previously uninsured, America’s healthcare system still remains infected by profit driven companies.

The fight for basic human rights remains an issue today. Numerous groups are constantly fighting for freedom and equality around the world based on sexual orientation, gender, race, and class. Access to affordable healthcare needs to be a basic human right that should not be taken captive by greedy capitalists. America has come a long way as a country, but our values of profit over basic human rights should be a reflection of how far we still have to go. As Martin Luther King Jr. states, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane”. By 2019, there will be at least 30 million American’s uninsured because they find the costs of insurance too high. Instead of capitalizing individually, America truly needs to come together collectively and create social change.