12 de febrer 2017

The coverage of health risk and the extent of generosity

The Right to Health A Multi-Country Study of Law, Policy and Practice

If we look at European Union, the right to health is heterogeneous. The size of the difference among countries depends on many factors, and path dependence explains mostly such diversity. If you want to check beyond EU, a new book explains how countries define health risck coverage under different arrangements.
Looking at health through a human rights lens tells us something about the nature of illness that epidemiology and biology cannot: it encourages us to consider to what extent illness is unjust. It also frames illness and disease within the political, social, cultural, and economic conditions that surround it; considers the power dynamics that perpetuate illness and disease; and focuses the attention on marginalized and vulnerable groups that may exist outside of medical research priorities or beyond the target demographics of political decisions, at greatest risk of becoming invisible. Worse still, history has shown us that in extreme situations medical professionals can be used as tools of the state to cover up or even inflict abuse. Considering the complex relationship between justice and health, using the international framework for the right to health offers the possibility of mitigating some of the effects of deeply embedded inequalities and discrimination and promoting environments in which anyone can achieve their highest level of health.
There is a major misunderstanding about the frame of the right to health. Somebody should specify that we are talking mostly of right to health care and state at the same time about the individual duties on health. Anyway, let's imagine a country that close to 2% of population are il.legal immigrants that have the right to health care accepted as any citizen, this is my country.  Unfortunately such unique level of generosity and solidarity you'll not find it in this book:


PS. Somebody should ask at the same time if going beyond such level of generosity is financially sustainable. However this is an inconvenient question, a politically incorrect one.

PS. Good post.This Economic Phenomenon Is Making Government Sick and this one