Abstract
Over 45 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Those living in poverty exhibit the worst health status. Employment, education, income, and race are important factors in a person's ability to acquire healthcare access. Having established that there are people lacking healthcare access due to multi-factorial etiologies, the question arises as to whether the intervention necessary to assist them in obtaining such access should be considered a privilege, or a right. The right to healthcare access is examined from the perspective of Western thought. Specifically through the works of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Hannah Arendt, James Rawls, and Norman Daniels, which are accompanied by a contemporary example of intervention on behalf of the medically needy by the The Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute.As human beings we are all valuable social entities whereby, through the force of morality, through implicitly forged covenants among us as individuals and between us and our governments, and through the natural rights we maintain as individuals and those we collectively surrender to the common good, it has been determined by nature, natural laws, and natural rights that human beings have the right, not the privilege, to healthcare access.
Highlights
The health of people in different socioeconomic strata is disparate whether measured by education, type of employment, or income level [1], but those living in poverty exhibit the worst health status [2,3]
Not all of them are unemployed, or underemployed, there is no doubt that occupational status affects insurance status, which affects health status, and there is convincing evidence that low socioeconomic status causes poor health [5], as does race [6]
The presence of others: Rawls and Daniels and the application of justice to healthcare While navigating the pathway of healthcare access as a right emphasis has been placed upon Aristotle's view of the soul, Kant's regard for the absolute worth of humans, Hobbes' position on covenants, Paine's support of rights, and
Summary
The health of people in different socioeconomic strata is disparate whether measured by education, type of employment, or income level [1], but those living in poverty exhibit the worst health status [2,3]. In the United States there are over 45 million uninsured or underinsured people who by definition have restricted access to healthcare [4]. Having established that there are people who have a lack of healthcare access due to multi-factorial etiologies the question arises as to whether the intervention necessary to assist them is something that should be considered as a privilege, or a right. I will posit in this dialectic that access to healthcare is a right, not a privilege
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