The obligation to provide access to and coverage for healthcare
The obligation to provide access to and coverage for healthcare for all Americans as a right is yet to be fulfilled despite other nations making significant progress on the matter. The US is still inclined towards healthcare provision as a commodity that is subject to economic, social, and the working class only affords market demand (demand and supply) as quality healthcare coverage. In the US, healthcare is mediated by insurance coverage that can either be private, employer-based (government-based for employees in the public sector, or private for those in the private sector). With that being said, healthcare in the US is still not perceived as a basic right since coverage does not extend to the public as a whole. I think that healthcare should be a right for each citizen in the US since the approach can be beneficial in several aspects, including improved healthcare coverage and reduced medical costs.
Healthcare is a vital requirement for an individual’s well-being, and it also gives one the ability to do other activities. Making healthcare accessible to a wider population can be useful in improving lives since the number of deaths resulting from lack of adequate insurance cover can be reduced significantly. Lower healthcare costs are also likely to be realized as a result of making healthcare access a right to each citizen. Public and private spending can be lowered by up to $1.8 trillion in the next 10 years as a result of lowered prescription drugs and administrative costs. The effectiveness of this approach can be seen from other nations like Canada and the UK, whose universal healthcare coverage spending was 47% and 42% of US per capita spending in 2017 (Soril, Adams, Phipps-Taylor, Winblad & Clement, 2017). The US should also follow suit and make improvements to its healthcare coverage since other developed nations have already proven its effectiveness.
References
Soril, L. J., Adams, T., Phipps-Taylor, M., Winblad, U., & Clement, F. M. (2017). Is Canadian healthcare affordable? A comparative analysis of the Canadian healthcare system from 2004 to 2014. Healthcare Policy, 13(1), 43.