Ethics Over Healthcare As A Human Right: Is There A Right To Healthcare, And If So, What Does It Entail?

The idea of a basic human right to healthcare is an enormously contentious, ethically fraught, and practically complex subject. Supporters argue that access to healthcare is a human right, in part because without it people are unable fully to exercise or defend other rights and opportunities; critics of the idea consider healthcare over-reliant on income redistribution as market forces. Questions to be asked in consideration of this issue range from the Aristotelian philosophical basis of human rights, through practical healthcare operationalization and into surrounding socio-cultural connotations. In the end, healthcare is both a matter of principle and pragmatism to be treated as some form of human right with its corresponding obligations.¹The broader idea of a right to healthcare is at heart an argument from human rights, which are usually understood as universal liberties and claims that people have in virtue of their humanity.² These rights are occasionally based on philosophical ideas of human self-esteem or equality, and around the value of simply being human.³ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is one of the key human rights frameworks and was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, recognizing a diverse array of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights—including