Doing what is right

Access to health care is a basic human right. The UN Declaration of Human Rights Article 24 propagates the right to basic health services. As much as I agree with the UNDHR, this would and should be the case if we were living in the ideal world. In the majority of the underdeveloped nations of the world, this is not a reality. You don’t have to go as far as the underdeveloped countries to see that this is the case. The United States is included in the list of countries where health care is not a right and not everyone has access to medical services.

 

 

Thanks to President Obama’s landmark initiative, the Affordable Care Act, it is now compulsory for one to maintain health insurance in the United States. This has changed only the fact that it will provide more than 18 million people health care for the first time and people will finally not be rejected by health insurance companies for having a pre-existing condition. This is a great stride in the right direction for the US, however, there is a large part of the population that is being excluded from any right to health care. Undocumented immigrants living in the United States do not have access to any non-ambulatory services. Even though they are afforded this minimal care, they must live in the shadows and fear that if they are to seek these services they may be found by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and ultimately deported. 

“Legislation has reinforced this restriction time and again—the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (both passed in 1996), and even the Affordable Care Act of 2010 have all made clear that the federal government does not intend to use tax dollars to help pay for the medical care of those who have entered this country without a visa. The majority of undocumented immigrants are Latino and poor, with jobs that rarely provide them with health insurance. Very few see primary-care doctors. When they seek non-urgent medical attention, they often do so through private doctors who see them for cash, some of whom take advantage of this arrangement by ordering excessive procedures—a complaint I’ve heard from many of my patients. While the Affordable Care Act prohibits the undocumented from purchasing insurance from state exchanges, no other legislation expressly forbids the purchase of health insurance otherwise.”(1)

With these types of laws, we are unable to provide care to so many that desperately need it. Many may remember the crisis that occurred last year with the enormous influx of children coming to the United States from Central America. There were rumors coming about that these children were ill with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. The truth is that they were no more ill than unvaccinated children in the United States. The issue here is that these children were sent by their parents or decided to flee their war torn or extremely dangerous countries. El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala are all suffering from extremely high rates of gang violence, lack of power and control in government institutions, and economic issues.

 

When these children arrived in the United States, risking their lives to cross borders with abusive and murderous coyotes in perilous conditions they arrive to have their hopes and dreams crushed. They are housed in detention centers and eventually sent back to their country of origin. With the political climate in the United States, these children arrived at an inopportune time wanting something more. They have come to the US seeking everything that their countries cannot and are unable to offer them- peace, safety, health, education.  They came seeking health but that is not something the US government chooses to afford them. It is something that the United States government barely accomplished with its own citizens. The need for Universal health care and for laws that protect all of those that find themselves within our borders seems so far away it may be a faded distant star.

-J.Nuila

 

 

1.       Nuila, Ricardo. “Taking Care of Our Own”. Virginia Quarterly Review. Winter 2015 Edition. 2015.