Abstract
Against a backdrop of non-ideal political and legal conditions, this article examines the health capability paradigm and how its principles can help determine what aspects of health care might legitimately constitute positive health care rights—and if indeed human rights are even the best approach to equitable health care provision. This article addresses the long American preoccupation with negative rights rather than positive rights in health care. Positive health care rights are an exception to the overall moral range and general thrust of U.S. legal doctrine. Some positive rights to health care have arisen from U.S. Constitutional Eighth Amendment cases and federal and state laws like Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Finally, this article discusses some of the difficulties inherent in implementing a positive right to health care in the U.S.
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Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Daniel Sulmasy and Daniel Brudney for their extremely insightful and effective suggestions and participants (James Nickel, Gopal Sreenivasan, Matthew Liao, Sarah Conly, David Reidy, John Tasioulas and Varun Gauri) in the University of Chicago’s Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society and Pozen Family Center for Human Rights symposium, “Is Health Care a Human Right?” for very helpful comments. I also thank Daniel Kim and Betsy Rogers for editing assistance, Michael DiStefano and Joshua Jordan for research assistance, and the Greenwall Foundation for grant funding.
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Ruger, J.P. The health capability paradigm and the right to health care in the United States. Theor Med Bioeth 37, 275–292 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-016-9371-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-016-9371-y