The Right to Healthcare: A Nursing Perspective on Access and Equity

This nursing assignment delves into the critical debate of whether healthcare access should be considered a fundamental human right, irrespective of an individual's socioeconomic status. The paper explores the historical context of healthcare rights, referencing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its implications within the U.S. healthcare system. It critically analyzes how factors like medical insurance, employment, and residence influence healthcare access, leading to health-related disparities and inequalities. The essay highlights bioethical considerations, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and the significance of migrant health equity, ultimately arguing for the urgent need to establish basic healthcare access as a human right in the U.S. to reduce mortality, morbidity rates, and socioeconomic disparities. The paper references key sources like the American Bar Association and the World Health Organization to support its arguments.

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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NURSING
According to Schraufnagel, Schraufnagel and Schraufnagel (2017) there are two
different types of belief in the domain of healthcare access. Majority of the population are of
the opinion that access to healthcare are basic human rights and satisfied at any cost. While
few groups of population argue that, the healthcare access is a privilege that is being accessed
by the people who belongs to upper class of the society. Several healthcare policies govern
the process of healthcare access and the nature of health services that are being delivered. In
the United States the access to the healthcare service is determined by the socio-economic
level of the individual and this include but is not limited to the access to the medical
insurance, employment opportunity, residence and the ability to pay the healthcare charges.
These factors contribute to the development of the health-related disparities leading to the
development of health inequalities. The following paper aims to discuss whether the access to
healthcare must strictly be the basic human rights of an individual and not be defined by his
or her socio-economic status.
The right to the healthcare has long been acknowledged globally and was first
conceived in the U.S. Healthcare was enlisted in the Second Bill of Rights that is being
drafted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) but was never implemented. Later Eleanor
Roosevelt took FDR’s work to the UN were the same was expanded and clarified and she
became the first chairperson for the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR).
The committee codified the human rights under Article 25 as an essential right of health.
However, the U.S report to the UN in the year 2015, failed to identify human right as the
basic health need and it referred it as an effort towards the healthcare measures. Thus US
healthcare system violates UDHR and discriminate the minority population from the
healthcare access (Jong, 2018). According to the American Bar Association (2019), the US
does not have a health care system all it has only a health insurance system.

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NURSING
However, Schraufnagel, Schraufnagel and Schraufnagel (2017) are of the opinion that
healthcare as a human right is no novelty. Thus, every individual must be equal right towards
healthcare access. According to the bio-ethics, it is the duty of the healthcare professional to
provide care to the patients irrespective of the socio-economic status and the cultural
background. Violation of bio-ethic leads to the generation of health inequality along with the
generation of increased rate of mortality and morbidity among the people from poor socio-
economic background. During the year 1986, the Emergency Medical treatment and labor
Act has raised the issue to treat the critically ill-patients in the emergency unit equally (Clark,
2017). Jong (2018) stated that as per the reports from The World Health Organization (2018),
there are 763 million internal migrants and 258 million international migrants in the USA.
Globally nearly 65 million people are forced to leave their homeland. Thus, migrant health
equity is important and transformation of the healthcare right as the basic human right for all
will help to decrease this health inequality.
Thus from the above discussion, it can be concluded that, in US there is an urgent
need to make the basic healthcare access as human rights for all. Doing so will help to
decrease the prevailing health inequalities among the people from the poor-socio-economic
group and thereby helping to decrease the high mortality and morbidity rates.

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NURSING
References
American Bar Association. (2018). Health Care As a Human Right. Access date: 14th Jan
2020. Retrieved from:
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home
/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/health-care-as-a-human-right/
Clark, M. (2017). Bioethics and Healthcare. Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society
of America, 72.
Jong, F. C. D. (2018). Health inequalities and migrants: accessing healthcare as a global
human right. International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, 11(4), 229-231.
Schraufnagel, A. M., Schraufnagel, W. E., & Schraufnagel, D. E. (2017). Is Healthcare a
Human Right? Yes. The American journal of the medical sciences, 354(5), 447-448.