Healthcare Realities: A Right or A Privilege - Essay Example

 Is Health Care a Right or a Privilege? Healthcare issues have been a major debate, especially in the United States where a part of the divide believes that healthcare is a human right that must be provided to all, by the government. The opposite side of the debate seems to believe that healthcare should be treated like any other product and service, and therefore be subjected to the forces of capitalism (Degen, 2008). These differing views have been the fuel behind such efforts by the government such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as the Obama Care. Should healthcare be a universal human right provided for and protected by the government? This is an issue that will continue to elicit much debate among many people. Healthcare is vital to the sustainability of life (Hooker, 2011). In the modern times, there are many diseases and ailments that are so expensive to treat that an average person may not afford the treatment fee and therefore the only thing they can do when they contract such as disease is to wait and die. Healthcare is a universal need that when denied leads to low quality of life. Additionally, it is being recognized by many nations around the world that believe that universal healthcare must be availed to all people regardless of socioeconomic status. Thirdly, I believe that without recognizing it as a right and making it to be provided by the government, poor people would not be able to access it because the capitalistic mechanism would make it too expensive for the poor to access and thus lead to unnecessary deaths as people fail to access treatment. Due to the fact that the government recognizes the right to life as a primary right that is protected by the constitution, it is only proper that healthcare, due to its effect on life, be considered as a universal right. Healthcare is a universal need for many people and just like other rights that are considered to be inherent to human beings, such as the right to vote, it should not be availed only to those with money but rather should be available to all, regardless of their socioeconomic status (Roberts, 2010). USA has a long history with regard to human rights. It comes from the early years where one had to have money to vote (poll tax) and when various minorities, including women and black people were not allowed basic rights such as the right to vote. Due to the fact that modern healthcare has increased in cost, and also the number of diseases has also increased, there is the fact that if not availed to most people, who cannot afford, would be left to have a much lower quality of life, if and when a person gets ill, especially with a disease that is expensive to treat. It should not be that when a person is ill, their ability to access wellness and healthcare is based on whether they have money or not. This is because healthcare is not a secondary or tertiary need, it is a primary need, in absence of which human life is degraded and put at risk. The right to healthcare is one that has been addressed by the United Nations. This union of over 197 nations from around the world, places its stand on the fact that they believe that healthcare is a human right that should not be left to the forces of capitalism. I believe that this stand by the United Nations is important in trying to determine whether healthcare is a right or a privilege (Fomented, 2009). If not treated as a right and not provided for by the government, healthcare becomes just like any other product that can be subjected to the forces of demand and supply. Given the fact that the demand is higher than the supply, it would only lead to the cost of healthcare (which is already for most people) skyrocketing and leading to most people being unable to pay for healthcare. As this happens, what would follow would be the degradation of life as many people would have to either live with illnesses or die, just because they don’t have the money. The private providers would take advantage of the capitalistic environment to exploit the patients and hike up the cost of healthcare in pursuit of profits. It is important to establish that contrary to other products and services such as cars, that a person can live without and not have their lives degraded, healthcare is essential and without it, a sick person’s quality of life is degraded. One thing that has come up in the recent years is the fact that poor people are not able to access healthcare in the United States of America. The cause of this is the fact that poverty has increased in USA and the diminishing of the middle class in the United States. Healthcare, due to its proximity to life and death, is one service that all people, including the many poor Americans, should be able to access, regardless of their socioeconomic status, their political affiliation, their education level or even their age and gender. Yet, as Mack (1998) argues, poverty makes this impossible to achieve. How are poor people, for instance, to access healthcare in a country where treatment for a disease like cancer would cost more than a year’s salary of an average individual? That would only mean that if the healthcare is not provided by the government, just like any other universal right such as the right to vote, it would only be left to be enjoyed by those with money. Yet, for human dignity to be sustained, this should not take place. How, for instance, would it be like to see so many people being sent to an early grave just because they did not have the money to pay for treatment of a disease that is otherwise tractable? Would that not constitute human injustice? This is why I believe that healthcare should and must be provided as a universal right protected by the constitution, and provided to everyone, socioeconomic status notwithstanding. As can be seen, it is very evident that healthcare is an issue in the United States of America. There are those who may feel that everyone should pay up for their own utilities, including healthcare. This view is justified because no society would want to promote lazy people who just sit around waiting for hardworking citizens to work for them. When the government uses tax money to treat people, it might feel unfair to those who work so hard to finance government expenditure through tax. However, it is an inescapable reality that the cost of healthcare in USA has skyrocketed and only very few people can afford most treatments such as treatment for cancer. Without the government protecting these people and providing for their healthcare as a right, most of them would end up dead, or with very low quality of life. Yet, the degradation of one human life anywhere is the degradation of all humans everywhere. Healthcare must therefore be an inalienable right, to all, rich or poor. References Degen, R. (2008). The Triumph of Capitalism (1st ed.). New Brunswick: transaction Publishers Fomented, J. (2009). The A to Z of the United Nations. Lanhan: Scarecrow press Hooker, B. (2011). The Demandingness Objection, in T. Chappel, The Problem of Moroal Demandingness: new Philosophical Essays, Palgrave MacMillan. Mack, E. (1998). Deontic Restrictions Are Not Agent Restrictions, Social Philosophy & policy, 15(2) Orentliecher, D. (2012). Right to healthcare in the United States: Inherently Unstable, American Journal of Law and Medicine, 38(326). Roberts, S.C. (2010). Applied Evolutionary psychology. Oxford: Oxford University press. Read More