Continuing the conversation:
What aspect of access to healthcare is a right? What kind of healthcare? Acute, life-threatening? Chronic, annoying? Chronic, life-threatening? Cosmetic, vanity? Cosmetic, reconstructive? Evidence-based vs. non-evidence based? Who decides what’s a right? Who/what companies influence the czar who decides?
First I would make the distinction between the right to health, the right to healthcare, and the right to health insurance (although they are inextricably linked). “Health” can be a very abstract concept, encompassing everything from the absence of disease to the more broad WHO definition. My conception of health as a human right entails ensuring that everyone has an adequate opportunity to be “healthy”, where health is defined as the minimization and prevention of “unnecessary” suffering caused by illness.
The right to have the opportunity to live a healthy life becomes meaningless without means towards achieving that end. As a classmate of mine once wrote:
It’s not that “health insurance” in and of itself is a human right, but it’s a means to ensure that we do uphold what I believe is a fundamental human right — the right to health.
Expanding access to healthcare and health insurance is an important part of ensuring that everyone has a chance to be healthy.Of course the immediate problem is limited resources — yet we live in an affluent society that can and should provide at least a basic package of health services.
I’m not advocating for everyone to have immediate access to the most extravagant health interventions such as kidney dialysis or hugely expensive end of life care. Nor do I believe that people have the right to equal health outcomes — some people will always be more healthy than others (though we should work to decrease health disparities).
Who decides what’s a right? Who/what companies influence the czar who decides?
This is a legitimate question, one that I don’t have a good answer for. Here’s what I will say: a system that determines the right to health based on ability to pay is not the answer. There has to be a more rational and ethical approach than that.
Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell’s case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.
Read the whole story here
