Reasons to Treat Healthcare as a Right

¶ … Healthcare Being a Right or Privilege

The healthcare debate is one that seems not to end even with significant amendments and adjustments that are made to the laws and the systems that are operational within the nation in regards to healthcare. The healthcare issue, being that it is central and important to all Americans, it has widely been used as a political manipulation tool especially during campaign periods. Politicians have sensationalized the issue over the years and the changes that have seemingly been made have made not as much impact on the healthcare of the citizens as was perceived.

Having made the healthcare issue to be central part of their campaigns, governments over the years have made an implicit reference to charging them to be morally responsible for the heath of the nation, since many have voted in governments, including the current on the basis of assurance over healthcare. The vote being an individual right, once used to install a government based on a promised policy, the citizens hence have the moral right to demand for the service upon whose premise they voted.

The other factor that needs to be put into perspective is that, the U.S.A. is a willing party to the World Health Organization (WHO). For the U.S. To be a member of such global voluntary organizations, several factors were put into considerations and critical evaluation of the aims and mission of WHO made before the congress gave the accent to join WHO. Apparently, the central and most important tenet of WHO is the right of each individual within the society to access and enjoy the highest attainable standards of health. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was made in 1948 after the WWII also has an emphasis on the healthcare being a basic right due to the atrocities that were experienced during the war (Jayp, 2012). Though this is not a universal law, it laid down the fundamental and basic reference points from where countries could borrow material and accordingly amend their statutes and constitutions to take better care of their citizens during peace and war times.

It is paramount to note that people do not choose to be sick, or to get run over by a car or be involved in accidents, neither do they choose to have terminal conditions or disabling complications in their bodies. The human body suffers several infections and illnesses and since it is not out of volition, the least that a government can do to its citizens is to alleviate their pain by providing free medication as a right and help the citizens carry on with their daily activities. This is the moral duty of the government.

On a comparative basis, the U.S. still lags behind in terms of making healthcare free and treating it as the right of each citizen. The U.S. stands alone among the fellow developed nations in terms of providing healthcare as a right. The U.S. is ranked number 11 by Forbes among the developed nations in terms of provision of healthcare (Munro D., 2014). While other nations provide free healthcare for their citizens, the U.S. still ranks among the most expensively charging for healthcare with the fallacy that the citizens receive higher quality of care, which is not the truth on the ground.