Health care should be considered a human right in the United States.

The United Nations has documents that say a State has the responsibility to protect, fulfill and respect a human’s right to health.

Universal health care has shown to be possible in other countries.

The US may have just adopted a form of universal health care, but there is no mention of human rights.

“The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”

“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.”

-Canada

-Japan

-New Zealand

- looking at other democratic and industrialized nations, it is apparent that universal health care is “feasible and necessary”

-- the US can learn from the experiences of other countries

-- health care provided according to a person’s ability to pay

--Low and moderate-income families without access to employer sponsored insurance will now receive tax credits to help pay for their insurance.

--Services such as cancer screenings, vaccinations, birth control, and depression screening will now be with free with insurance plans.

-- Each state will now have a health insurance exchange to find and compare insurance plans.    

   --Insurance companies will now have to justify any raise of premiums and states have the power to block them.

-- Insurance companies will also not be able to charge higher premiums because of a woman’s gender

--this is fundamentally unjust

The general definition of natural rights may be useful, but Wolff asks the question of whether these “fine words” have substance. He suggests that a human rights doctrine is a broadly liberal and somewhat ideological framework, because it assumes that everyone acknowledges the same basic morals (Wolff 230). This is valid because of how unspecific rights can be, but these pieces include the excerpts from these international documents that do give more specific duties to the governing bodies.

The content of the right to health is hard to specify given a country’s resource limitations and health needs. But going back to the morals of the issue, Gable states “issues of cost and complexity should not render human rights any less fundamental”