Like I said I would probably be dead without the ACA. I can get into it, but the ACA forced healthcare providers to drop pre existing conditions ( I could not be insured due to a bout of ulcerative colitis ) and it forced them to provide coverage for mental health care.
I also lived in extreme pain and got dependent on painkillers because I could not afford a surgery for a rare disease I had in my knee joint. I would likely be dead by now from a combination of all these conditions without healthcare. It’s hard for me to imagine that I would not have a right to this care - I’d just have to suck it up and live with it if I wasn’t fortunate enough for the ACA to have come along.
I never said I was anti-ACA. I am strongly in favor of that and medicare for all type plans are even better. I just don’t think that you need to think that health care is a human right to be in favor of those things.
If I am in favor of those things, does it really matter whether I think health care is a human right or not? Both of us would have the government pursue it vigorously.
Also important to note having a right to care, doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you will get it. If you are a citizen of a very poor country that technically has universal health care, but just doesn’t have the resources to provide it, then you’re dead too. I’m sure people in that situation (which is a lot) aren’t really comforted by the fact that health care is a right in their country.
No, I guess it doesn’t matter - I just think of situations where the ACA did not happen. Millions would be uninsured and not have access to healthcare. You believe governments should strive to provide healthcare to their citizens, or at least access to healthcare, but that this is not a right? I cannot bring these two together in my head.
For instance, my belief is that as a human being with a disease or illness that I should be able to seek treatment for that disease without going into crippling debt or being forced to take lesser treatment options. I should receive the best possible care. I believe this is a right everyone has, that the government is responsible for enforcing. You believe the govt should enforce but that it is also not a right. What is it then? A privilege?
This is why I believe wealthy nations and global organizations should be providing resources to poorer nations that do not have the resources.
There are nations that do not have access to fresh water for their entire population - is access to fresh drinking water not a right as a human either? I am trying to figure out what you think is a human right if not access to healthcare.
It should probably be clarified that I am closer to believing ACCESS to healthcare is a human right, not necessarily the healthcare itself, but that’s a minor distinction that probably does not need to be discussed.
I’d don’t know if Botswana has UHC, and I can’t be arsed up too look. But lets just assume that it does. Also assume Botswana is very poor.
If a Botswana citizen has a rare and expensive medical condition and the government simply doesn’t have the resources to provide the existing treatments to save that citizen’s life, then have they violated that person’s rights? Does the citizen have a cause of action against the Botswana government to provide something that they literally couldn’t?
It depends on how one reads the question. As mentioned above, I would guess that 100% of the people on this forum support universal health care, but asking the broad question “is HC a right” will turn a lot of legal minded people down a tortuous path of decoding how one categorizes these things and why. Quite famously, for example, Canada has a strong culture of supporting UHC but the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not provide for HC as a right, and our SC has held that it is not a right. That is neither an argument for or against UHC in a legal sense. Indeed, as often as not in Canada it is the people arguing for private HC that claim rights violations, i.e. I have a right to buy my HC when I want it. So its not as clear cut as you describe. Rights can be wielded against progressive policy, even though that is not intuitive.
Adequate healthcare is a human right. Offering universal healthcare is actually a requirement to enter the European Union.
I guess we could go with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948
It is a moral imperative that we provide adequate healthcare to all. America is the richest fucking country in the world and yet it lets its poorest people die of curable diseases because healthcare is treated as a commodity to generate a profit off of. How the hell is that acceptable to you?
Why do you think that I think that it’s acceptable? I’m pro-ACA, I’m pro medicare for all. I think Canada has a good system? Have you not actually been reading the posts?
What actually policy do you favor that you think I don’t?
Like I clarified in an above post, and I think ggoreo is getting at the same thing I am, I think access to healthcare is a human right. So as long as that citizen of botswana got the same access to healthcare that the wealthy and powerful do in that nation, then I don’t think his rights have been violated.
This gets at what I was trying to clarify early and did a poor job of it. Equal access to healthcare is a better way to describe it.
Any government who doesn’t treat universal healthcare as a human right will never provide it because they will constantly think of it as a matter of finances rather than a case of morality and will thus always find an excuse to not do it.
And it will only be treated as a human right when the people do so.
No, it doesn’t, and I never said it did. But it’s certainly a step in the right direction to providing millions of people access to healthcare that otherwise wouldn’t have had it. Thousands, if not millions of lives have undoubtedly been changed for the better because of it; I am a walking living breathing example, like I explained.
I’ll never change my mind on this, the ACA has done way too much for me in my life.
This more closely matches Canadian attitudes and Canadian law. Our approach is to have laws that inhibit private delivery of health care on the basis of rights to equality, and to deliver HC publicly. This is colloquially interpreted as a univeral right to HC, but is legally not a right to HC.
But this is demonstrably false. See Canada. Are we really the only country in the world that delivers UHC without encoding it as a legal right?
We (well, I) may be getting hung up on the legality. You are correct that Canadians broadly accept that every one “should” get basic HC and maybe that is more substantive than any Charter or law.