This is really more of a gedankenexperiment and I'm very interested to read your thoughts. Over the weekend, I had the occasion to hear a very liberal, Christian minister who works in hospice share his thoughts about the need for universal health care in the United States. Obviously, a timely topic. His discussion began from the happily stated major premise that access to quality health care is a fundamental human right. Being of a well-documented contrarian nature, I immediately tried to determine whether I believed this premise.
Is access to quality health care a fundamental human right?
Unlike food and water, health care is not necessary for survival, in general. First, the average, healthy person does not die within a month if deprived of health care. Second, professional health care that was superior to doing nothing at all has only existed for about the last 100 years (less than 1/1000th of the history of modern humans).
In general, health care is a quality of life issue, not a necessity. Many quality of life issues affect life span (e.g., wealth, food quality, exercise, geography, etc.), but are not considered fundamental rights. Although we can be disturbed by the unequal distribution of these quality of life variables, most people, but not all, do not argue for universal distribution of these items as with health care.
A strong exception to this way of thinking are global vaccination programs to eliminate contagous diseases and pre/post-natal care that make big differences in infant mortality.
Thoughts?
Comments
Josh Witten | 08/18/09 | 19:03 PM
Gerhard Adam | 08/18/09 | 19:50 PM
The first thing I'm curious about is whether you consider access to food and water fundamental human rights? If so, what food and what water? If not, then there's not much point in going on since if such basic necessities aren't being considered, it would be foolish to examine more esoteric topics.
I would also ask, what is the definition of a "right" in this context? It would seem that such a consideration falls squarely into whatever people determine it to be since only an authority can grant or take away a right. So, this doesn't speak to what we are capable of doing, but only to what we are protected by law to be allowed to do (usually within a very narrow context).
What makes me question this is your use of the word "fundamental" which suggests that it is somehow different from any other political right which is granted or denied. Since a "right" is a political definition, it shouldn't be confused with actions that we may feel entitled to, or that we can "get away with". In fact, I think a good argument can be made that many things we consider to be "rights" aren't any such thing, but merely the by-product of indifference or a hole in the law.