Persuasive topic: Healthcare as a right or privilege. Research Paper

Healthcare as a Right or Privilege
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Healthcare as a Right or Privilege
Introduction
As humans, everyone is subject to falling sick. Typically, this means that each individual requires a health program that can facilitate healthcare. However, this remains a hot topic in the United States regarding whether healthcare is a privilege or right. Various scholars have come up with contradicting viewpoints regarding the notion. There is doubt that things related to healthcare must be handled with proper intensity, but the way to implement it has proved to be a problem. Given that everyone is subject to illness, healthcare should be deemed a right and not a privilege because of the individual varying financial statuses.
Healthcare as a Right
In the US declaration of independence list, some rights, including happiness, lives, and liberty, are heavily emphasized. In this case, with the idea of life and happiness on the list, it directly means that healthcare is a right. As humans, no one can have life or be happy without good health. Indeed, for one to be happy, there should be a provision for living adequately with food, clothing, medical care, as well as housing (United Nations Human Rights, 2019). Those who view healthcare as a privilege argue that those who invest more in medical care benefit more from the service providers. However, countries such as France fund its healthcare system using the taxes collected from products deemed to be harming the health of citizens. Therefore, failure to provide healthcare to citizens is a violation of the right to life.
Those who consider healthcare as a privilege base their arguments on the need to work. Admittedly, this follows the government programs of insuring the working population. Healthcare is not a privilege reserved for those with money. Economically people are not equal given that some have all they need for any medical attention, whereas, there are also those with limited ability to purchase any prescribed medicine. Given that humans are not immune to all illness, those with little or no income should not be denied the right to live. Besides, according to Statista (2020), the unemployment rate was about 4.6 percent (6.8 million people) by 2019, meaning if healthcare is a privilege, all this population is denied the right to be happy. Rich or poor, no one wishes to fall sick, meaning in case of any health concern, there should be proper healthcare services without discrimination. Ultimately, healthcare is a right since every individual is subject to falling sick, making treatment a necessity.
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), healthcare is subjected to the control of an employer. In this case, employees endure abusive working conditions to retain health insurance. These employees get their insurance on agreement with the employers' description of healthcare. For example, in the recent case Burwell V. Hobby Lobby, with concerns about the employers’ refusal to cover employees' reproductive health if deemed varying with employers' religious beliefs (Supreme Court, 2014). Typically, someone's health cannot be determined upon the beliefs of another. Ultimately, depriving another perso...