The Right to Healthcare Should be Guaranteed to all Americans

The Foundation of Health Care Law and Ethics in the U.S.
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The Foundation of Health Care Law and Ethics in the U.S. The delivery of quality patient care makes for an intersection of the policy goals behind the heightened calls for and ongoing health care reforms in the United States. Achieving this core desired outcome for implementing policy goals is dependent on the healthcare system’s ability to enhance patient safety, reduce the cost of care, and increase access to healthcare services. Both the actualized and proposed health care reforms fall short of delivering quality health care to patients in the U.S. due to the rising cost of health care in the country, cases of medical incidents, and high ineligibility rates for the diverse federal health care insurance programs. Such shortcomings of the United States health care system lead to uneven distribution of health care, denying access to ineligible individuals with a necessity of care and entitling those who meet the demands of government health programs (Maruthappu, 2013). The existing disparities in the delivery of health care and the health care system’s distribution of the same based on factors other than the need for or necessity of medical care and attention betrays the ethical principles of beneficence and non-maleficence (Maruthappu, 2013). In essence, the United States’ healthcare system refuses help to those in need based on other external factors, thus putting them in harm’s way. Enhancing the country’s healthcare system to overcome the outlined shortcomings and disparities in the delivery of patient care demands the adoption of a universal healthcare system by making health care a right for all Americans. Therefore, without a doubt, the United States government should guarantee the right to healthcare for all Americans The United States government should provide universal healthcare as a public policy or a law that accords all citizens the right to access quality medical care from birth. President Roosevelt envisioned the enactment of such a policy in his proposed Second Bill of Rights in 1943, including the right to receive and access quality health care (Maruthappu, 2013). However, the bill never got the attention it warranted but made its way to the United Nations and was incorporated into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes the right to adequate health, well-being, and medical care (Maruthappu, 2013). Such rights are embraced by other developed countries worldwide, except for the United States, which is yet to recognize healthcare as a human right. The enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) 2010 makes for one of the recent attempts by the government to recognize healthcare as a right for all Americans in line with the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Maruthappu, 2013). However, the existing disparities in the accessibility of care overshadow the nobility of such policy reforms. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), for instance, accounts for a significant increase in healthcare coverage for the previously uninsured, with approximately 22 million people gaining medical cov...