This comes at me from multiple directions and I’ve helped people navigate it a few times (not recently😕) but it keeps on popping up: we don’t have a right to medication.
Or medical treatment in general
There is EMTALA and some of the small provisions in the ACA of course
But that’s about emergencies
If you have a chronic illness, no one is obligated to treat you for it
If you have type 1 diabetes, no one has to give you insulin if you can’t pay for. Some programs exist in our country to try to help people get it. But again, if you can’t pay for it yourself no one is required to give it to you.
If you have a bleeding disorder no one is required to give you a plasma based medicine.
In an emergency, sometimes. But only if you’re in the right place with access to the right care
If you need chronic care to live you don’t have a right to get it
Go look up pictures of type 1 diabetics before Banting and insulin
Go look up treatments for hemophiliacs before the 1900’s, when most didn’t make it past the second decade of life
So many don’t seem to understand this
Or understand what it would mean to have a protected right to healthcare
It’s not like the government gives us rights. We don’t have a right to free practice because a document says so. The document is an agreement between the citizens of this country to create institutions that will defend that right for each individual living here.
The government itself is not allowed to infringe upon that right for sure. But if someone toes you down and forces you to pray the government is obligated to intervene.
The government is obligated ensure that no person is enslaved
The government is obligated to ensure all can vote.
We all have those rights
We’ve also created institutions that ensure we can exercise them.
Without those institutions. We wouldn’t be able to with any certainty, just look around the world and you’ll see many examples.
There is no institution that guarantees medications or therapies
There is no equivalent to the courts or military or police or CDC, for health related concerns.
Not that those institutions are perfect
There just isn’t any institution that currently exists aimed at keeping sick people alive.
Right or wrong
Not the question
Right/Wrong vs Reality
Reality; if you’re sick, you have no right to the technologies that will keep you alive.
You can pay for the privilege of using those technologies.
Nested Hierarchy 