Health, and in particular, ‘the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’ is a human right. Not all countries have the same opinion on how to manage health for its population.
ICESCR (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ) has been ratified by 171 states, but not the US which is a global superpower. We wonder why they did not agree with these terms to guarantee a right to health.
The Affordable Care Act had been put in place during Obama’s presidency but there is a lack of affordability that makes the system not efficient enough to help people in need.
Since the United States has not been able to guarantee its people a right to health care, it has been creating huge inequalities for decades. The inequalities in the United States are mainly due to the fact that a very large part of Americans cannot afford health insurance, which is too expensive for them.
These inequalities lead Americans not to go to the doctor: Before the 2010 passage of the ACA, which progressively expanded health insurance coverage, 39% of Americans with below-average income reported not seeing a doctor for a medical problem because of cost, compared with 7% of low-income Canadians and 1% of those in the UK. Therefore Differences in life expectancy have been widening, with the wealthiest Americans now living 10–15 years longer than the poorest.
Source: US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2014
Medical bills are a major contributor to household debt and bankruptcy, comprising more than half of all unpaid personal debts sent to collection agencies (Dickman, Himmelstein and Woolhandler, 2017). Financing of health care in the USA is regressive, with poor and middle-class individuals paying a larger share of their incomes for care than the affluent, thereby deepening inequalities in disposable income
The united states has several helps for people in need which are Medicare and Medicaid, but these two programs are able to help certain people but it is quite limitied. Those who did not fit into specific age, employment or income groups had little to no access to health care.
According to an article in the new york times, universal health care rights do not exist in the united states because it is an individualistic society and it is a racial issue (Interlandi, 2019). The title of the article is ‘Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer has everything to do with race’. Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act have helped shrink those disparities. But no federal health policy yet has eradicated them.
To conclude, the medical costs of the Americans represent a very important cost, and the better the quality of care, the higher the cost will be. This is a source of great inequality in the United States and results in households being left in great poverty. The election of Joe Biden represents hope for Americans because during his presidential term, and arriving in the context of a health crisis, he pledged to expand Medicare and Medicaid. This could represent a huge change to enhance social inequalities in the United States.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dickman, S., Himmelstein, D. and Woolhandler, S., 2017. Inequality and the health-care system in the USA. [online] ScienceDirect. Available at: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673617303987>
Equalityhumanrights.com. 2021. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) | Equality and Human Rights Commission. [online] Available at: <https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-human-rights-work/monitoring-and-promoting-un-treaties/international-covenant-economic-social>
Interlandi, J., 2019. Why Doesn’t America Have Universal Health Care? One Word: Race. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/universal-health-care-racism.html>