Healthcare is a human right

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all ... are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Emphasis in the above comes from me, because for about 240 2/3 years of the 240 2/3 years since the signing of the Declaration containing these words, we have done an exemplary job of focusing on the "Liberty" part - at least in our rhetoric if not in our actions, and fair job of pushing the "pursuit" part although with decidedly less concern about the success of the pursuit - again to varying degrees depending on your gender, race, identity, age, etc. The one part of this most oft-quoted cornerstone of the cornerstone of our Republic that has eluded our gaze since the beginning has to do with what defines a right to life defined self-evidently for all citizens of a country.* We wax poetically and fervently about dying for our country, extoll the virtues of striving for the American dream, and bleed passages upon passages resisting tyranny in all its real or simply perceived forms. We even have a Bill of Rights that quite literally defines all of the freedoms we hold as essential to the existence of our Republic, and in not one of them do we define what the primary self-evident right means (although hilariously, we do provide that the government cannot take a life without due process...so I guess there's that).

We must correct this egregious oversight immediately.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on which all member states agree as a condition of participation, does a better job of defining some attributes of what a right to life looks like, most specifically in Articles 22 through 27 of the Declaration. (Admittedly, with only twelve original amendments proposed in the Bill of Rights, I might need to give the framers of the Constitution a bit of slack that they did not get to it when the UN did not get around to it until the twenties.) I highly recommend reading them all, but two phrases leap out at me as important statements about the right to life:

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality. (Article 22)

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. (Part 1 of Article 25)

Within the means afforded to a state, membership in a society means that barring a choice that separates the person from that society, each citizen has a right to "health and well-being" within the limits of the resources of the country. Note, this does not require that everyone have the same amount or type of the necessary resources for these basic needs, but simply a minimum threshold to maintain "adequate...health and well being". One could live in a completely casted society (although other Articles of the Declaration have stronger language dissuading such structures) which recognizes that elites earn and deserve more than those of lesser value and still accept that the lowest working class should have everything it needs to maintain health so as to keep working tirelessly for the benefit of the elites.

The United States of America - the country that first codified the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" - has a decidedly more dystopian view of what that right looks like. For the better part of four generations now, while we have had the means to feed, clothe, house, and provide medical care to the entirety of our citizenry, we have sought regularly to make these basic components of "health and well-being" a conditional provision based upon one's ability to obtain work. Note, not the desire of one to obtain work, but the ability. Nowhere does the unnatural precondition show itself more plainly than in our approach to providing healthcare for our citizens.

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, citizens of the US paid for the health care they could afford. If they could afford the needed medicines and treatments they lived, if the could not, they did not. Occasionally, some held accident insurance or sickness insurance, but these primarily covered lost wages and not the cost of the care. During World War II, when the government imposed wage controls, employers started offering health insurance as a benefit to lure worker in a competitive labor market. Post-war attempts to make access to this type of mechanism a right ran against cries of "socialism", thus establishing the system that has held for the past 70-plus years whereby those who work have coverage while those who do not have - until recently - had no options. The late 1960s found us recognizing at least some of the inequality of this and attempted to rectify the disparate treatment of the elderly and disabled by passing Medicare and Medicaid, however this still leaves the poor and unemployed out of the picture, and ties millions more to unproductive employment simply for the privilege of having access to healthcare.

Over the past century, all industrialized nations (members of the OECD - Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) except for Mexico and the United States have established universal health care available to all citizens regardless of ability to pay. If the US sat amongst the top of the world in all health-related outcomes like life expectancy, children surviving childbirth, and obesity rates - to name a few, then having an outlier approach to health management would make sense.

But we do not, and it does not.

The crazy thing is: universal health care actually makes more sense if one thinks that the primary responsibility of a citizen centers around providing work valuable to the economy of the country. Ensuring that each member of the society has necessary health coverage means that a small group of people getting ill will not endanger the working-capable individuals through unnecessary epidemics. Additionally, if an individual falls out of the workforce due to layoff or business closing, we should want them to remain as healthy as possible so that they can return as quickly as possible to active work.

Instead, we introduce the specter of death to those who lose their job, or become unable to work through no fault of their own. Prior to a couple of years ago, we even went so far as to limit or eliminate affordable access to health coverage for those most unhealthy in our society: those with pre-existing conditions, or with catastrophic illness, or those whose coverage lapsed. In my old neighborhood, the local bar/restaurant held fundraisers on a weekly basis for local families struggling under the weight of unpaid medical bills, or needing financial assistance to pay for special treatments for their children. Although these shows of community support provide a wonderful opportunity for communities to come together, the fact that we necessarily tie one's ability to provide "health and well-being" to one's ability to make friends with means enough to provide support places an entirely uncertain condition on our survival.

Prior to 1945, the argument existed that maybe we did not have the means to provide universal healthcare, however that position has long since died as country upon country has adopted the policy. On an economic level, no persuasive argument exists. On a moral level, no persuasive argument exists. On a political level only one argument exists: that we callously cling to the maxims that only those who work deserve to live, and that profitability depends on depressing wages through limited mobility (as a result of a fear of losing healthcare). For a country that grew up and grew rich on entrepreneurship, universal healthcare provides the perfect foundation for freeing up the labor force to innovate. Freeing up labor will better allocate skills and resources to the places most needed. Removing the fear that having the right kind of job will determine whether one's loved-one will live or die will significantly increase the quality of life and create a decidedly healthier and more just society.

Regardless of how we accomplish this: Medicare for all, single-payer, two-tiered, whatever...the time has come for us to move beyond the barbaric, callous, and simply immoral way we have approached healthcare for the better part of the last century and move to a system that truly recognizes the right of every citizen to life.

*Note: Although the "right to life" movement uses the phrase as a focus exclusively on the unborn, this discussion focuses on the meaning intended by the author and signers as pertaining to all living citizens of the Republic.