Healthcare should be guaranteed to all as a right
Key terms
- Healthcare
- consisting of those treatments deemed necessary by qualified medical personnel
- guaranteed
- For the purposes of this topic, guaranteed means provided regardless of the individual's ability to pay- typically paid with via tax revenue.
For
- The ability to live a full life with human dignity and equality makes healthcare as a right imperative.
In the United States, if healthcare is guaranteed to all as a right, individuals won't need to put their money towards healthcare, minus taxes, and therefore people will have more disposable income which would help stimulate the economy.
Having health care would improve peoples' health and happiness enabling them to work more and more reliably. Companies would therefore make more in profit and the country's GDP would increase overall.
According to the United States Declaration of Independence all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights. In order to uphold these rights healthcare must be provided. These rights include "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Therefore, without healthcare to uphold individuals' health they are unable to pursue happiness and maintain life.
The WHO (World Health Organization), which has 194 member states, include healthcare as a right in its constitution. According to the WHO (World Health Organization) preamble of the constitution health is defined as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." The WHO constitution preamble also states, "The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition." Also, that "the extension to all peoples of the benefits of medical, psychological and related knowledge is essential to the fullest attainment of health." And "governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures." If health is to be maintained to its highest ability, healthcare needs to be provided by each country and each state, province, etc. within each country. In order to make healthcare a right it must be within reach of each person within the country whether they are citizens or not.
Against
Healthcare has the same problem as religion, definitions. Doctors like gyms need to pay the bills and from whom comes the money? To whom do we authorize for receipts? Excluding gwenyth paltrow's nonsense might be reasonable enough, but what technical definition will we enforce to create a new, what needs to be more inclusive, licensed class of "healthcare providers?"