Guaranteed Healthcare

Despite presidential forums, committee hearings and advertising campaigns, we're no closer to meaningful reform measures that would meet human rights standards and fulfill our human right to health care.  To hold health care reformers accountable for delivering universal, equitable health care that meets human rights standards, the Human Right to Health Program, run by the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) and the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), has published ten principles for financing health care. Go to http://ww.nesri.org/ or download directly http://www.nesri.org/Human_Rights_Principles_for_Financing_Health_Care.pdf

Everyone knows that our healthcare "system" is in crisis, dysfunctional, inequitable, segregated, wasteful, and produces unnecessary suffering and deaths.

Yet despite presidential forums, committee hearings, and advertising campaigns, we're no closer to meaningful reform measures that would meet human rights standards and fulfill our human right to health care.

On the contrary: current reform proposals by the president, advocacy groups and others from the "Democratic consensus" assume that access to care can be increased and costs contained as a by-product of fragmented, market-based services. Despite overwhelming evidence of the failure of commercial health care markets, reformers continue to treat care as a commodity rather than a public good that belongs to all.

As advocates for guaranteed, universal health care we can point to the long, dismal track record of market-based health care, and to the cost effectiveness of a publicly financed and administered system such as Single Payer. At the same time, we should also build the foundation for a more deeply-rooted ideological shift.

As long as our political culture is dominated by the myths of personal responsibility and pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps individualism, casting people in the role of competitive consumers rather than holders of rights, it will be hard to generate and sustain the spirit of solidarity required for contributing to everyone's health care, not just one's own.

The human rights framework addresses those very real ideological barriers head on. The principles of the human right to health care illuminate the social, economic, and moral aspects of our health care crisis and set the parameters for a sustainable system that is universal, equitable, and accountable to the people.

At a most basic level, human rights principles require that protecting people's health is always prioritized over other interests, such as market incentives. This means that we must stop treating health care as a volatile market good and start making it a sustainable public good that can be distributed equitably. And because public goods belong to all of us, we cannot allow private companies to restrict our access to care. Instead, health care should be publicly financed and administered, sustained by broad-based solidarity and full accountability.

If we succeed in shifting the health care debate from consumers buying a commodity to people exercising a right, we can build a political culture of human rights in which specific reform scenarios will not only appear more obvious but also acquire new strength to overcome the onslaught of industry lobbying and the timid maneuvering of politicians.

To hold reformers accountable for meeting human rights standards, the Human Right to Health Program, run by NESRI and NHeLP, published ten principles for financing health care, which are available for download at http://ww.nesri.org/. Direct link: http://www.nesri.org/Human_Rights_Principles_for_Financing_Health_Care.pdf