Healthcare Within the Context of Human Rights
by: Valerie Elverton-Dixon on August 6th, 2009 | 3 Comments »
A global movement: see www.phmovement.org/en
Before the United States was a nation, before it boasted the most powerful military on earth, before its economic, educational, scientific and cultural influence made it a leader of the world, the founders understood that they owed “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” They knew the nation they were bringing to birth would be part of a family of nations. Thus, they wrote the first of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration is a document that established a foundation for human rights. (I recognize the internal contradictions of slavery, blindness to women’s rights and a lack of respect for indigenous peoples made this and other early declarations of human rights far from perfect.) Human rights are rights that inhere in the human person by virtue of her/his humanity. The Declaration is a radical document that has inspired humankind to strive to make governments more responsive to the needs of their people.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.” The maintenance of these rights is the reason that governments exist. When the founders wrote the Constitution of the United States they articulated the purposes of the nation: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Later, they wrote the Bill of Rights that would restrict the powers of government and codify the respect that the state owes to individuals. These founding documents along with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen would help shape the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (UDHR) Eleanor Roosevelt was a major force in bringing this document into being. The hope was that if nations could agree on a set of principles that recognize “the inherent dignity and . . . equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” that the nations could forge justice and peace in the world.
I rehearse this history because in the current discourse on healthcare in the United States, we have forgotten that healthcare is a human right and that according to our own founding documents, governments exist to honor and to promote the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The United States in particular exists to promote the general welfare of its citizens. In my opinion, healthcare for all Americans falls into this category.
The UDHR says specifically that healthcare is a human right: “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. . .” (Article 25) The UDHR is a set of goals, and it does not carry the power of international law.
Other instruments are more binding. The international Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is one. It says: “The State Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” (Article 12 #1) In its preamble, it reminds us of our individual responsibility: “having duties to other individuals and to the community to which he belongs, is under a responsibility to strive for the promotion and observance of the rights recognized in the present covenant.” The United States signed this covenant in 1979, but the Senate has yet to ratify it.
The Protocol of San Salvador, an addition to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, also declares healthcare as a human right. This is a regional agreement of the Organization of American States. It says in Article 10, and I quote at length:
1. Everyone shall have the right to health, understood to mean the enjoyment of the highest level of physical, mental and social well-being.
2. In order to ensure the exercise of the right to health, the State Parties agree to recognize health as a public good and, particularly, to adopt the following measures to ensure that right:
a. Primary health care, that is, essential health care made available to all individuals and families in the community;
b. Extension of the benefits of health services to all individual’s subject to the State’s jurisdiction;
c. Universal immunization against the principle infectious diseases;
d. Prevention and treatment of endemic, occupational and other diseases
e. Education of the population on the prevention and treatment of health problems, and
f. Satisfaction of the health needs of the highest risk groups and of those whose poverty makes them the most vulnerable.
In this document, such would be a treaty obligation. The United States is not a signatory to this agreement. Many nations of the world are ahead of the United States in their willingness to obligate themselves to providing healthcare to their citizens.
In the current debate, we rightly ask questions about the cost, deficits and the debt we are leaving to future generations. We ask these questions regarding the monetary price. I ask: what is the human cost, the human deficit, the human debt we owe if we do not seize this moment and create a universal healthcare system in the United States?
Human rights come with responsibilities. Living in a free and democratic society of laws means we have duties to each other. We owe each other respect. We are obligated. Our obligations bind us together. Taxes are an obligation to each other and to the nation. If we are to have a just healthcare system that promotes the general welfare, we ought to have a public option, and we are going to have to pay for it.
The rich ought to pay more taxes because they have benefited more from the political system and the economy. That is where the money is. The top 20 per cent of the US population controls 85 per cent of the wealth (source accessed 8/5/09). Everyone ought to pay a tax on sugary drinks, and on junk food. Overweight and obesity are major causes of poor health. The current taxes we pay on alcohol and tobacco ought to go toward universal healthcare. And, at some time in the future, we ought to have a serious national discussion about legalizing marijuana, taxing it, and devoting that money to healthcare.
Political and civil rights are intertwined with economic, social and cultural rights. If we are to have a healthy body politic in the nation and in the world, we need healthy national and world citizens. We each are obligated to require this of our government.
In looking for a photo to go with Valerie’s post, I came across an article titled “Health Care Is Not A Right” (http://www.bdt.com/pages/Peikoff.html). I read a little way and was blown away, once more, by the blindness behind some libertarian arguments.
The author writes “Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s all…. Why only these? Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people. The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone…. The right to life, e.g., does not mean that your neighbors have to feed and clothe you; it means you have the right to earn your food and clothes yourself, if necessary by a hard struggle…”
My right to life depends on so many positive actions by others I can hardly count them: my mother’s and father’s caring for me from conception, and the care of their whole community; the education that has enabled me to understand the world and act viably within it was developed by innumerable formal and informal teachers, many of them unpaid or underpaid; my confidence in the food I eat every day depends on the integrity of innumerable farmers, processors, inspectors, many of whom could cut corners and get away with it (and many do, and so we depend on other people to struggle with us for ethical standards and enforcement); and every struggle against tyranny, arbitrary imprisonment, slavery and discrimination was and is today a collective struggle. That’s just a start. It takes positive, unselfish giving by the community to the community for life to flourish.
These are not negative obligations to leave each other alone, but positive ones to care for each other. What a cold world this author inhabits!
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an amazing and powerful document and I am amazed at how few Americans know about it.
One of the books we at Reach And Teach (the folks who manage Tikkun’s web and retail operations) feel should be in every house is called “We Are All Born Free.” This book is spectacular – the art is diverse and powerful and presents these universal rights in a compelling way. You could use one image a week for children’s time in church/mosque/temple…. you could use one image a night for bedtime reading…. you could invite friends over and look at all 30 and talk about how we feel about each of these rights and what we might do to make their acceptance a reality across the planet.Each of the major areas of the declaration is illustrated by world-class artists including Jackie Morris, Satoshi Kitamura, Catherine Anholt and Laurence Anholt, Marie-Louise Gay, Jessica Souhami, Peter Sis, Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom, Hong Song-Dam, and many others.
The royalties for the book go to Amnesty International.
If you’ve never visited the Tikkun store, this is a good reason to go right now.
https://www.reachandteach.com/store/index.php?l=product_list&c=30
Did not the U.S. recently become a signator to the UDHR? Or am I mistaken and thinking of something else?
As to the article, it is truly amazing to me that the U.S. has a ‘cafeteria style’ approch to ‘rights and responsibilities’ of and for their citizenry and their place in the world. They are no longer of the mind set or acting as a United country. More and more we see the ‘individualism’ mind set and the propagating of keeping the citzenry ignorant.
We are seeing this in action right now with the U.S. health care reform agent provocateurs. Again we are seeing how oppressive tactics are the SOP for those that wish to keep certain classes from enjoying the same rights as they profess to ‘want to keep’.
I am deeply disturbed at how the so called ‘christian’ class would enable this sort of behavior and ignorance. There is nothing ‘spiritual’ or ‘christian’ about oppression.