Healthcare Is a Human Right

If I don’t have the right to healthcare, I lose my right to life. It’s that simple.

Alright, I know this issue is a little more complicated than that, but that’s what it all boils down to. I depend on healthcare to stay alive. I need healthcare just to have a fighting chance at living a little longer, actually. If I lose access to healthcare, I won’t have a chance. Period. I don’t have much of a chance as it is, but at least if I have guaranteed access to reasonably affordable health care my situation isn’t completely without hope. Healthcare is, for me and millions like me, inseparably tied with life. They are one and the same right.

Yet this is, somehow, a controversial statement. Millions of people—and a majority of our current lawmakers—seem to think that healthcare is not a right. It isn’t explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights, after all. I’ve seen someone write that we don’t have the right to other people’s money, so we don’t have the right to healthcare; we just have to take responsibility for ourselves and pay for our own healthcare. I’ve heard arguments that food and shelter are necessary for life, yet the government doesn’t provide those for all its citizens. Why should healthcare be different? I won’t pretend to know all the reasons people think healthcare isn’t a basic human right, and I am sure there are other arguments out there against it. But these seem to be some of the most common arguments, so I’ll respond to them below. If you know of any other reason people oppose the right to healthcare, please let me know!

First, the constitution. No, it doesn’t say healthcare is a right. Healthcare as we know it today didn’t really exist when the constitution was written, and practices like slavery were originally allowed by the constitution, so perhaps we should stop revering it quite so much and update it as needed a little more, but that’s another issue. The United Nations though, which we’re part of when last I checked, in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that:

“everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Gender-exclusive language aside, this pretty clearly lists health care as a basic human right, no matter the circumstances in someone’s life. Perhaps we should honor that, as a member of the UN.

Next comes the single-most prevalent argument against the right to healthcare: personal responsibility. Or, as I like to call it, selfishness. It is, simply put, the idea that we should all just take care of ourselves. Well, that would be great if that were possible. Personally I’d love to work and make enough money that I could pay for my own medical costs. Who wouldn’t want to be a millionaire, after all. I’m not exaggerating, by the way; my medicals bills have averaged about a million dollars a year. Without laws that prevent me from being discriminated against by health insurance companies, I’d have been on the hook for that—if I was even able to get that care at all. Now, most people touting personal responsibility don’t want to abolish the concept of health insurance. They just want everyone to be responsible for paying for their own insurance.

And that sounds reasonable, at first. Before I got cancer I was working towards that goal, but neither of my part-time jobs offered benefits. So I simply stayed on my parent’s insurance, since I was 23. Here’s the irony though: if I had been a “good, responsible, self-sufficient American adult” I’d have been on my own health insurance when I got diagnosed, and I would be in a much worse position now because of it. Since I haven’t been able to work due to my ongoing treatment, I would have lost that insurance when I had to quit my jobs. I don’t know what I would have done next. I guess I would probably have gotten my own insurance through the state exchange without being denied for my brand new pre-existing condition, which makes two ways Obamacare would have saved my life in that scenario. At any rate, it would have added another layer of difficulty to what is already an almost-impossible situation. I have a super rare cancer that will probably kill, me, after all. I don’t need another thing to worry about.

Last, I need to respond to the idea that food and housing aren’t provided by the government, so healthcare shouldn’t be either. First, this is just factually incorrect. Our government provides food and housing assistance for those who need it, just as Medicaid provides healthcare assistance for those who need it. If you think the government shouldn’t play a role in assisting its most marginalized citizens then that’s another argument for another time. But the fact is we already do have programs in place to assist those in need with these basic components of their right to life. Second, whether or not the government should cover the cost of health care for all its citizens is irrelevant to whether or not we have the right to healthcare.

We have laws and government agencies that ensure our food and housing meet certain standards. The FDA works to make sure companies don’t sell foods contaminated with E Coli, for example, and our housing codes make sure that building materials don’t contain poisons like lead or formaldehyde. These are fairly basic consumer protection measures, designed to keep us from being taken advantage of by profit-driven companies. This same principle applies to our healthcare laws, for now. The Affordable Care Act prevents insurance companies from selling ridiculously cheap plans that provide no meaningful benefits. Obamacare keeps people like me—whose health issues make them unprofitable to insure—from being discriminated against. It means I can’t be taken advantage of just because I happened to get cancer. I can’t be charged more or denied coverage just because I have health issues. These are fairly basic consumer protection measures. And they’re under attack.

The right to healthcare doesn’t necessitate taxpayer-funded universal health coverage through the government. It doesn’t have to be socialized medicine. But at the very least it has to include consumer protection measures that keep the people whose lives depend on health care from being discriminated against. It has to prevent companies from selling cheap plans that cover basically nothing, just as we have laws preventing companies from selling cheap cars that don’t meet safety standards. Whatever we think about the proper roles of a free market or government involvement, we must recognize that the right to life is intimately intertwined with the need for affordable health care for all people. We need common-sense consumer protection laws, whatever form our healthcare system takes. The AHCA being worked on by a handful of senators right now is a brazen assault on such protective measures. It is, simply put, an attack on the Right to Life itself.