Healthcare and human rights ☀
Now, the Bill of Rights, would be a logical place to start in any discussion of rights and their nature, even though most of the freedoms articularted there are, at least in a Hohfeldian sense, better characterized as liberties. But there are many other things we consider rights that require a financial obligation on somebody’s part. You have a right to vote for President every four years. The election is neither optional nor free. You have a right to equal protection under the law. You have a right to a host of public services. And, as much as this will annoy the conservatives, “entitlement” is another word for right. Legally speaking, you have a right to anything for which you have a valid legal claim.
This leads to two immediate conclusions. Firstly, healthcare is not, as of the writing of this post, a legal right for most of the country. That could change. Secondly, that is all beside the point. The bumpersticker that says, “Healthcare is a human right” is invoking a broader scheme of rights. Healthcare is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see article 25). Of course, we’re a little fuzzy on how we feel about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because it includes a bunch of hippie stuff about not torturing people. So where do we get a sense of rights that everybody is entitled to—just by merit of being human? At the very least, it is clear that our expectations change as we advance as a society. We might consider basic sanitation a human right because we have the means and ability to provide it. We might consider food a human right—because we have plenty of food. We consider the right to have your day in court a human right because we have a stable and sufficiently impartial judicial system. Should medical coverage also make this list?
In other countries it does. If we don’t think it should here, is it because we’re a less capable society or because we’re a less humane society?
It is fascinating how the concept of “rights” (or even “freedom”) has been perceived throughout the nation’s history.
From the founders “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” which was a morphing of John Locke’s “life, liberty and pursuit of property”. Was that an purposeful equivalency of property to happiness? Or was it due to a progressive streak in Thomas Jefferson, forseeing a higher truth?
In the 20th century, Squashed notes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” moral imperative for a “good society”:
- freedom of speech and expression
- freedom to worship
- freedom from want
- freedom from fear
In recent years, with the Age of Reagan, as tentacles of neoliberalism clutched at the global economic command nexus, many dutifully shirked from this moral vision and instead, embraced the recast laissez-faire “virtue of selfishness”. “Greed is good” became the mantra, and “dog eat dog” “every man for himself” was in effect.
But that philosophy just doesn’t jibe with a world more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. It’s just a giant rationalization to justify institutionalized injustice.
