Healthcare is Not a Human Right

: Image by venetia joubert sarah oosterveld via Flickr

As this debate on health care rises in intensity, I felt compelled to post. Some people say that the health debate is second priority to the economy issue, but it’s kind of the same issue in a way. It’s the same issue because people can’t afford medical treatment they desperately need. What economy issue is greater than the issue of not having enough money to save your own life, or the life of your child or your spouse?

At the same time, hearing more about healthcare being associated as a “human right” challenges me as well – for various reasons. I think it is probably best expressed in my comment to a blog, owned by a person I have deep respect for leading the message on the desperate need for health reform. My comment is below. Stone me if you will, but despite our dire situation, no, I don’t believe healthcare is a human right, because it’s kind of offensive to those out there who are literally being treated like animals.

oakbeat // Apr 5, 2009 at 12:26 pm Your comment is awaiting moderation.

At the grave risk of being stoned, may I dare state that I don’t agree with your tagline – I don’t believe Healthcare is a Human Right.

I do believe it’s a Civil Right. As a citizen of the United States, yes. And I believe that it’s an unbelievable tragedy that I think we’re like the only developed nation in the Western Hemisphere that does not offer free healthcare to all of its citizens.

But a human right? The only reason I was compelled to point this out is because human trafficking has been a conviction in my heart as of late. There are more slaves now today than ever before – six year-old girls sold as sex slaves and being taught to use child language like “yum yum” for oral sex and “boom boom” for traditional sex, catering toward mostly American tourists. In India, child slaves are cheaper than cattle. I believe the figure was something like 27 million slaves in the world today, a multi-billion dollar industry and more and more of them smuggled into the United States.

Sorry I just had to get it off my chest because I do believe that human rights (the right to be treated human) and civil rights (the right to be treated as a contributing member of a society that can afford to take care of its needy and sick but cannot due to the greed and power-mongering evil within large corporations today) needs to be differentiated.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that Sicko hasn’t spoken to me. It has. It had me floored, and I realized that a lot of my God-given talents have been misplaced and I want to do more to be a voice for some of these patients who cannot find resources to be a voice for themselves. I feel that is my calling if I can make a difference.

But only because I feel it’s abominable for greedy executives at large health care companies to suck the life (literally) out of the underprivileged so that they can be fat, rich and happy, and that our nation in order to have hope in the future need to establish for our future generation a society of community awareness and understanding that being blessed means that you need to be a blessing to others, not vice versa. And for those who have spent so much of their efforts to help others and in return get smacked in the face like those 9-11 workers who literally were told after weeks of being on ground zero because they were saving more American lives and ended up with permanent lung disease, the government’s response: “we never asked you to help us, why should we help you.”

That’s like if someone was maimed for running across the street to save my baby girl’s life from being hit by a car and then me saying, “Oh, I never asked you to save her life.” Times thousands.

The fact that we pay so much in taxes and contribute as honest workers in this country to be abused by the wealthy and powerful who use fear as a paralyzing weapon of control is yes exemplified through the horrific health care system we live in today. If you are an American Citizen you deserve to have the civil right for free health care based on need and not based on ability to pay – absoulutely, that is the very least the government can do.

But human rights? I have to honestly disagree.