Health is a human right: a national health program for the United States

Abstract

The gradual but remorseless undermining of the British National Health Service by British governments of the past few years has culminated in the present widely proclaimed crisis of the health care system in the UK. Our present government has declared some interest in the US health care system as a possible alternative model because there health care is largely a privately produced and marketed commodity. ⁽¹⁾ This paper is a forthright antidote to the advocacy of private or even semi-private health care systems, exposing the manifold inadequacies of the US system. At the same time it ad vocates a public health care system for the US which in many respects per haps represents a progressive improvement on the present NHS structure.

The paper is the National Rainbow Coalition Health Commission's Position Paper No 1. The National Rainbow Coalition is the largest pro gressive group in the US. It works within and outside the Democratic Par ty and it works in both electoral and non-electoral politics. It includes labour unions, farmers' associations, black, latino and other minority movements as well as peace, feminist and ecological movements. ⁽²⁾ The President of the Rainbow is Jesse Jackson, who is also the Presidential Democratic candidate proposed by the Rainbow. The National Health Commission is responsible for advising the Rainbow Coalition on matters of policy. This paper was approved by the major policy body of the Na tional Rainbow Coalition at the National Congress which took place in Raleigh, North Carolina in the autumn of 1987. The report is now the Rainbow's main policy paper on health. Other papers prepared by the Commission and approved by the Congress are on AIDS, occupational and environmental health, and other issues.

The paper was prepared by Vicente Navarro, the Coordinator of the Health Commission with the assistance of David Himmelstein and Steffi Wool- handler, and the twenty other members of the Commission in October 1987.