Recognition of the International Human Right to Health and Health Care in the United States

Eleanor D. Kinney, JD, MPH Hall Render Professor of Law - Co-Director, William S. and Christine S. Hall Center for Law and Health
Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis
RUTGERS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 60:2 – 2008]

Available online PDF [45p.] at: http://www.pegasus.rutgers.edu/~review/vol60n2/Kinney_Macro_web.pdf

Also at: http://indylaw.indiana.edu/instructors/Kinney/Articles/Rutgers_Law_Review_2009.pdf

“…….This Article traces the recognition and implementation of the international human right to health in the United States.6 First, it traces the record of the United States in the ratification of human rights treaties of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

Then, it describes the implementation of the human right to health at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as deficiencies in the U.S. health care sector that compromise implementation of the human right to health. The Article then compares the United States with other nations in the implementation of the human right to health.

The Article recognizes the extraordinarily difficult philosophical and economic issues associated with defining the international human right to health and the management of its implementation. Accordingly, the Article addresses these issues by pointing out the difficulties and referring to scholarship that analyzes these issues more comprehensively. Given the focus of the Article on practical implementation, the Article assumes that the international human right to health does exist as a coherent legal and moral principle and constitutes an appropriate contribution to the advancement of humankind.

This Article also assumes that the human right to health means a right to the health care services and public health protections that facilitate the enjoyment of good health to the extent possible given specific and independent processes within human beings. This Article assumes that, while appreciating the analytic difficulties of economic human rights like the right to health, a world without international economic, social, and cultural rights would be a pessimistic world….”

Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis
http://indylaw.indiana.edu/centers/clh/