Health care is a universal right, declare health care reform activists in Montana. If we recognize universal care as a right rather than as a private product, the activists contend, Americans across the country could gain fair and equitable care.
Anja Rudiger of the Human Right to Health Program, said that a set of principles should be used to determine whether a system supports health care as a right or if the “profit motive” overshadows the affordability and accessibility of care. Rudiger has previously written an article for Health and Human Rights demonstrating the use of a “human rights framework, [in which] ethical principles — or “values” — are the premise for action.” This framework, Rudiger asserts, allows activists and policy-makers to re-frame the debate on health care by leveraging, “theoretical and empirical findings to make a case for re-envisioning health care as both a right and a public good.”
Montanans for Health Care, a group involved in this movement, is pushing for congressional hearings. In particular, they address their concerns to U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Baucus is the committee chairman writing the Senate Health Bill, who, along with Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, “has been criticized by progressive groups for bowing to pressure from the health insurance industry lobbyists,” reports Democracy Now, an independent daily TV/radio news program. Earlier this year at a National Health Policy event, Sen. Baucus said, “at this time, in this country, the single-payer [health care system] is not going to get even to first base in the Congress.” A single-payer health care system is not the only way to achieve the right to health care in the U.S., but is it acceptable that this option is taken off the table from the start?
Amnesty International has echoed the Montana movement and has called on reformers in a petition based on the work of the Health Care is a Human Right Coalition. The Coalition, which includes Amnesty International, National Social and Economic Rights Initiative (NESRI), the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), and the Opportunity Agenda, seeks to promote health care as “a human right, not a commodity.” The Amnesty petition states, “Gap in the health care system should be eliminated so that all communities, rich and poor, have access to comprehensive, quality treatment and services. Publicly financed and administered health care should be expanded as the strongest vehicle for making health care accessible and accountable.” Both this petition and the activism in Montana are critical steps in challenging our current health care systems across the country.
We in the health and human rights community should stand with this reform activism, with the hope that health care can one day soon be seen as right, rather than a privilege.
See also,
Download the Amnesty International Petition here
Video Series: Human Right to Health Care in Montana
Video: NESRI Executive Director Cathy Albisa at Amnesty International USA Annual General Meeting – March 28, 2009 on a panel entitled “Health Care is a Human Right: Realizing the Right to Health in the United States”
NESRI: Fact Sheets and Publications (scroll to Human Right to Health)