Should Healthcare Be a Basic Human Right

April 17, 2021 Final Essay Should healthcare be a basic human right? There are many things in the world, specifically America, that are not easy to afford. Luxuries like nice cars, a large home, even brand new clothes can be pricey. But what if something we needed to survive was vastly high-priced? That’s reality, and health care in the United States is well over what the average American citizen can afford. Let alone what the lower class can afford, which makes up nearly one-third of the population (Elkins, 1). Healthcare is a basic human right because health insurance and costs are extremely expensive in America, and everyone deserves a right to get the medication and treatment they need, without the worry of expenses. There are three significant reasons behind why healthcare should be considered a basic human right that I will be going over in this essay. The first being that no one should go into debt because they contracted an illness or disease, etc. Another reason is that universal health coverage is more attainable in the U.S. than many think and many other countries have it. Finally, it can slow the spread of deadly diseases and a lot of sicknesses as well. Inalienable rights are undeniably important in the view of everyone in the world. As nearly all forms of government around the world hold some sort of written law that ensures the rights of its citizens, we can all agree that it is prominent we attain basic human rights. It is also a good thing to have a document that lays out exactly what rights we have as well. In the United States of America, we have the Bill of Rights to protect us. But not always will documents like these list every single right we are entitled to. Even though it isn’t written that healthcare is one of our rights, most Americans have a clear understanding that it is still a basic right, or should be. Most of the articles in the bill of rights don’t stand between life or death. The right to healthcare can. No one should be denied healthcare because they cannot afford it. An article titled “Seeing Red: Americans Driven into Debt by Medical Bills,” written by Michelle M. Doty, Jennifer N. Edwards, and Alyssa L. Holmgren, goes into depth on the unfortunate financial binds that Americans catch themselves in. The authors give the statistic to put it into perspective, stating “A recent study showed that 80% of Americans are caught up in the chains of debt.” That’s 8 out of 10 people in debt in America. That’s an insanely large number. An even crazier fact is that much of this debt that’s acquired is caused by pricey medical bills. According to the same article, 77 million American adults have accrued medical debt (Doty, Edwards, Holmgren, 1). This should not be that high of a number. People should not have to go into debt for an illness, medical emergency such as breaking a bone, or simply buying medicine or getting the treatment that they need to survive. Many people do not have the funds available to afford healthcare. In 2020, as it averages $456 for an individual and $1,152 for a family per month, (ehealthinsurance.com, 1) the costs of healthcare can be difficult to manage for many Americans. On top of the high cost of living in America, health insurance isn’t something that is easily accessible to everyone. Not to mention, those that do have health insurance have to pay copays a lot of the time, which can be anywhere from $15 to $300. There are quite a few health insurance companies that don’t always cover all treatments either. So if it just so happened that you woke up with an inescapable and inevitable illness tomorrow morning, yet your insurance doesn’t cover the cost of the medicine needed for it, you’d have to pay it out of pocket. And if you didn’t have the money to pay for that medicine out of pocket, your health would be in great danger, all because of the faults of health insurance in the U.S. In another article titled “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study,” written by authors David U. Himmelstein, Deborah Thorne, Elizabeth Warren, Steffie Woolhandler, they state some alarming statistics regarding the extreme expenses of medical bills. In their study, they reveal that medical bills are reported to be the number one cause of U.S. bankruptcies. They also find that 62.1% of bankruptcies were caused by medical issues (Himmelstein, Thorne, Warren, Woolhandler, 2). That’s more than half. Dealing with a medical issue is stressful enough, there shouldn’t be even bigger stress of paying for the treatment for it to be added to that. That is why healthcare being free, or at the very least affordable, would be so beneficial and save so many people from going into debt or bankrupt. Just like food or water, we also need medical treatment to survive. Everyone will need medical care at least once in their life. It should be considered a basic necessity. With everything else in America being so high-priced, the government should be willing to at least give free healthcare. The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” therefore we should all be able to obtain healthcare. Access to quality health care should never depend on where you live, how much money you have, your race, gender, or age. It is not fair that those who make more money are granted life when others are dying because they simply cannot afford the insane prices America puts on treatment for our health. Just like author and senator Edward M. Kennedy states in his article “Health Care as a Basic Human Right: Moving from Lip Service to Reality”, “The 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization declares that the highest attainable standard of health is a fundamental right of every human being, without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.” If the government can’t provide us with the care we need to be in good health, then it truly does not care about its citizens. In America, there is no practical reason we shouldn’t be able to grant free or affordable healthcare for everyone. One of the reasons that author and neurosurgeon Philip Barlow gives in his article, “Healthcare is not a human right” is that healthcare is difficult to define. Sure, there might be many different definitions of healthcare, but it isn’t impossible to define. If we were to consider healthcare as a basic human right and provide it to everyone across America, we can specify what the details of it are. Immunizations, prescriptions, checkups, we can put those details and what having free healthcare covers in the fine print. And those specifics should all be covered in having free healthcare. There are many negative repercussions that people claim come with having free healthcare as well, such as that the government doesn’t have enough money for it, or that they would have to take more out of our taxes, so we would end up having to pay for our “free” healthcare anyway. But this doesn’t have to be true. While it might be the way the government would try to go about it, there are many other ways that could work so much better. One, for example, is to cut the amount the government is spending on other things, the military for example. In the year 2019, the United States Government spent $686 billion on national defense, military weapons, and military activities. And that number has only been predicted to grow as the years progress (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 1). If we could use just a small fraction of that budget to be used on free universal healthcare, it would make a huge difference. Many other countries have been successful in supplying their citizens with free healthcare. 70 countries, including 30 of the world’s poorest, have passed laws toward Universal Health Coverage (Pereria, 6). The United States is considered to be the number one, if not one of the richest countries in the world (Kennedy, 4). There is no good reason we shouldn’t be able to afford free healthcare for all. At the very least, they can make it affordable for all, The United States has proved that it has enough money to spend on things like a large military defense, they can spend it on things that actually will benefit its people in their daily lives, such as healthcare. It has been proved that it can be done by many other countries that are far less advanced than America, so we should be able to do it too. One example is the U.K. The United Kingdom has universal healthcare, and they have much less debt than the United States does. (Jones, 2195) It just goes to show that if we cut some of our national spending on unnecessary things, we could be in much less debt and also afford to supply those in need with healthcare. There are many things that universal, or free healthcare would prevent as well. If you look at the logistics, the United States could do a big part in preventing viral infections if everyone had access to healthcare. A big reason why infections and viruses are spread is that people don’t have enough money to go to the doctor and get them taken care of. Another problem that is worth mentioning is that jobs do not give enough paid sick days, so Americans are going into work sick because they cannot afford to take an unpaid sick day. That is how germs, diseases, and sicknesses are spread so easily and quickly. If we all, no matter the money in our bank accounts, could obtain healthcare, then more people would go to the doctor and get treatment for their sickness, thus reducing the spread of it. Of course, it wouldn’t stop the spread of these complicated viruses completely, but it would decrease it significantly (Pereira 9). We could lower the number of health problems in America with free healthcare as well. More people would see a doctor earlier on, reducing the chance of them contracting worse problems and possibly spreading them. One of the saddest things I’ve heard far too many people say is “I can’t go to the doctor, I can’t afford it,” when they’re sick. People suffer day to day with illnesses and pain just because they do not have the money to go to the doctor to get it fixed. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it best in his article titled “Health is a fundamental human right.” He stated that “No one should get sick and die just because they are poor, or because they cannot access the health services they need.” If anyone disagrees with that statement, they are selfish. The selfless human beings in this world and this country agree that every living being deserves a chance at a great life. When people avoid seeking medical attention because they cannot afford it, it leads to more problems. It leads to worsening their health and then causing further issues with health that they didn’t have to begin with. Thus creating more expenses for them to deal with if they see a doctor. It just isn’t fair to live life like that. Senator and author Edward M. Kennedy explains this concept in further depth in his article mentioned previously. He says “Lack of insurance often leads individuals to delay seeing a doctor or avoid follow-up care, which leaves the uninsured and underinsured in poorer health and with shorter life expectancy. Being underinsured also leads to significant medical debt, high out-of-pocket expenditures, and financial stress that often forces families to choose between paying for medical needs or paying for food, rent, and other necessities.” All of that could be avoided just by the government simply providing its people with what they deserve, affordable or free healthcare. There are so many Americans who can’t afford their medical bills and don’t have access to quality health insurance. Everyone knows at least one person who has struggled with medical bills in their lifetime, if not themselves. In fact, there are countless stories speaking out about this issue online. One source from the The Susan G. Komen Advocacy Alliance asked it’s network to share their personal experiences with American healthcare. Among digging through the many stories, there was one that stuck out to me from someone named Tina who lives in Santa Fe, Texas. Her story goes: “I lost my grandmother to cancer in 1994. She went without insurance for several years before her Medicare kicked in. As a direct result, her cancer went undetected and untreated. When doctors at University Hospital in St. Louis made the diagnosis, we were told that even with radical radiation and chemotherapy that her chances of survival were slim. The doctors said that if she had been seen sooner, that the outcome could be quite different. She passed away 15 months later. Even after 14 years, her passing still affects my life. She was my guardian while growing up and later became my mentor. I still miss her. Because she did not have access to affordable health care, my life was robbed of her joy too soon.” Tina’s story is incredibly sad and unfortunately, she is not the only one who has gone through a terrible tragedy like that, due to the poor health coverage in America. Just like her grandmother, there were numerous other stories about people holding off from seeking medical attention because they can’t afford it, just in that one article. Even though that happened to Tina many years ago, we’re still struggling with the same issues in present time. Today, there hasn’t been much change in the amount of money people are expected to spend on getting treatment for their medical problems. In fact, the price tags they put on improving our health have only gone up and continue to rise as the years pass. In 1960, U.S. healthcare cost $27.2 billion. In 2018, U.S. healthcare costs were $3.6 trillion (Amadeo, Boyle, 1). Throughout this journey, we’ve discussed why free healthcare can be achievable and we’ve also agreed on why it should be achievable. The people of America deserve to be treated as equals, just as it says we should in the Declaration of Independence. We should be treated as humans. It’s not selfish to want to afford a way to a better, more enjoyable life. America has all the essentials to fulfill the “America the Great” title it has been given before. But right now, with all of the Americans that are fighting to stay alive because of the high costs, it is not so great. Healthcare is just one of the many important necessities to ensure a quality life. Healthcare is a basic human right because health insurance and costs are extremely expensive in America, and everyone deserves a right to get the medication and treatment they need, without the worry of expenses. When will the U.S. wake up and give their people what they need? Another great statement from Edward M. Kennedy expresses that “The time has come to recognize quality, affordable health care as a basic right for all Americans, not just an expensive privilege for the few.” This needs to change. America needs to change.