Health care, a right or a privilege?

        Is healthcare a right or a privilege? With all of the recent health care reform it is important to first look at this question. I believe that healthcare is a right.

Some might say that healthcare is not a right because it is not written anywhere in our constitution. A document that was written 200 years ago by men who, at the time, only considered health problems to be that of the flu or maybe a plague. Don’t get me wrong, our founding fathers are the basis from which all American life as evolved, and it is a great life, a revolutionary way of living that is the best in the world. I just feel that they had no idea of what the future would hold as far as health care costs and the vast amount of diseases and conditions that are present in our far more advanced society.

         As a nation, we agree that individuals should be accountable for their actions. People often argue that those who are reckless with their bodies by eating unhealthy foods or smoking/doing drugs and subsequently develop cancers shouldn’t be subsidized by other people’s insurance premiums as the latter group works hard at staying healthy by exercising and eating healthy. They say it is not fair. Frankly, life isn’t fair. Bad things happen to good people. Furthermore, good health is not predictable and even the healthiest of people can get injured in a car crash or some other similar event that cripples them into having expensive health costs for the rest of their lives. What about the children? The ones who are born everyday with pre-existing health problems such as cancers, genetic defects, type 1 diabetes, the list goes on. These health problems are often the most expensive because they require treatment from doctors and advanced treatment methods on a weekly if not daily basis. It is theses types of cases that insurance providers turn away because it is a guaranteed large expense. What are the kid’s parents suppose do? They will probably be driven into bankruptcy, foreclose their home, and owe money for the rest of their lives. Not to mention if their child survives after all that they have sacrificed.

          As for the issue of the homeless, a vast amount of the people who are homeless, are living that way because of some health related problem they, or their families,  could not afford. Therefore they lost everything. Whether it be mental illness or some other problem many are left to roam the streets with no treatment whatsoever.  Yes they have Medicare but in order to qualify they must provide proof of homelessness, have a birth certificate, interview with a case worker, and more. That is simply too much red tape. Helon Redman says it perfectly when she said, “The barriers for those with insurance coverage are numerous, but for the mentally ill who are uninsured they are almost insurmountable. In major cities, streets and shelters are full of mentally ill people who are not receiving any type of treatment…For people with a serious and persistent mental illness-especially the homeless-to negotiate the system and gather all the information needed to apply is almost impossible.” She later goes on to say how many of them end up in jail and get therapy through the prison system, which we already have to pay for. Why not provide a basic coverage to allow them to have a better standard of living and also not clog the prisons with even more people? The mentally ill are not free.

         We, as a country, decided that education was a right. We also decided that being able to call the police and fire department is also a right in case of emergencies. How is the well-being of our nation’s people any different? Tens of millions of people are uninsured, should we as a nation just look the other way as they suffer? We are fighting wars all over the world for other countries freedoms, spending billions of dollars, yet we cannot provide a basic form of healthcare to our own people?

         In conclusion, I believe that health care is a right. We are not a bunch of animals living in a society. The United States needs to join the rest of the industrialized world in providing healthcare to everyone. The current policy is far from perfect. In fact it needs a lot of work. The feasibility of a policy that provides some sort of care to everyone is mind-boggling. But I believe that once we acknowledge that healthcare is a basic right, we can come together as a nation to go about creating the best policy for this.