[Imc-bigmuddy] Health Care and Human Rights

[Allan Keith]

Conservatives like to claim that citizens of the United States have no
"right" to health care.

That assertion might be incorrect for this reason:

In December of 1948, when Harry Truman was president,  the United States
and many other nations ratified and approved the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. 

Among many other things, the Declaration states that "Everyone has the
right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical
care and necessary social services...." 

Furthermore, as I point out in two of my books, The United States
accepted and adopted that Universal Declaration of Human Rights a second
time by approving the Helsinki agreement in 1975. (The president at the
time of the Helsinki accords was Republican Gerald Ford.)

So if the United States wanted to be in compliance with the Declaration
it would have adopted national health care more than 60 years ago.

Instead, the United States, unlike almost every industrialized nation in
the world,  still does not have universal health care -- not even for
people who work full time.

Of course, it can be said that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
has no legal status in the United States -- that such agreement is not
legally enforceable in the U.S. 

However, even if that is true, the U.S. is certainly in clear violation
of the Declaration both ethically and morally. 


Allan H. Keith