Health Care is a Human Right!

Source: NESRI

Are you among those political junkies anticipating tomorrow's Supreme Court decision on the healthcare reform bill? Maybe while we're waiting we could take a moment to get a little human rights perspective on what kind of healthcare system we need:

Everyone has the right to health, including health care, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Health care is a public good, not a commodity. The U.S. health care system must fulfill these principles:

Universality: Everyone in the United States has the human right to health care.

Equity: Benefits and contributions should be shared fairly to create a system that works for everyone.

Accountability: The U.S. government has a responsibility to ensure that care comes first.

Visit the AIUSA website and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative site for more on health as a human right. 

And then to pass the time, sample some of the thoughtful columns Frank Huyler, the emergency room doctor who wrote one of our selections, Right of Thirst, has written  the New York Daily News:

Health care reform was the right thing to do...

Our rotten dental care system...

One young man's war...

And he puts that storytelling experience to good use in One patient's story...

"Ma'am," I said curtly, after introducing myself, "Why did you come to the ER in the middle of the night to get your prescriptions refilled?"

"I didn't come in the middle of the night," she replied. "I came yesterday afternoon."

She spoke sharply enough to get my attention. I glanced at her chart once more. Sure enough, she'd been waiting for 11 hours.

Ask yourself as you read is this a story that shows our health care system to be universal, equitable and accountable? What's your story?

Our June Author: Frank Huyler

This month we read the novel Right of Thirst by writer-physican Frank Huyler.  This brief audio interview from KUNM radio gives a good explanation of the themes and events that inspired the novel.

In this UCPress interview, Huyler is asked for his views on healthcare reform and puts in a plug for a Rights Readers favorite, W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz.

From New Mexico Magazine:

Q: What unique insights, as a physician, do you bring to your fiction?
A: I don’t know that I bring special insight, but being a doctor often reminds you of the real forces in the world. As a doctor, you’re around dramatic events. You’re seeing people in extreme circumstances. There’s an enormous advantage to seeing that all the time. Being exposed to elemental forces is an advantage. It’s the antithesis of the ivory tower—the dark tower, perhaps. It’s very much the real world

And here's a short video introduction to the book from the author:



Finally, The Guardian has a profile focused on his earlier memoir, The Blood of Strangers, an excerpt of which can be found at LOST Magazine.

Here's a little bonus on the subject of relief workers: a trailer for the film Living in Emergency about Doctor's without Borders.  Now playing Pasadena!

ProSorata

Frank Huyler, author of this month's selection, Right of Thirst, is donating some of the proceeds from his book to an NGO that provides health care to women and children in Bolivia.  I'll give him a chance to tell you about it:





Learn more about ProSorata at their website.  And while you are at it you can check out Amnesty International's campaign for maternal health here.  Don't forget to take action!

For June: Right of Thirst by Frank Huyler

For June we have selected Frank Huyler's Right of Thirst,

Shattered by his wife's death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he's come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.

This haunting, resonant tour de force about one man's desire to live a moral life offers a moving exploration of the tensions between poverty and wealth, the ethics of intervention, the deep cultural differences that divide the world, and the essential human similarities that unite it.