Health Care Is Still A Human Right; Socialist Party of CT Stands with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 51st Anniversary

For Immediate Release

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Contact: Todd Vachon, socialistpartyct@gmail.com

On this day in 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among it's thirty articles which detail the basic rights of all human beings is included the right to health care. Article 25 states that all people have the right to "health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
In the years following the Second World War, every industrialized nation except for the United States has realized this right for it's citizens.

On this anniversary of the UDHR, the Socialist Party of Connecticut would like to draw attention to this violation of human rights exercised in our own backyards. Our current multi-payer, for profit, health system (and it's modifications currently being decided in congress) does not secure the rights envisaged in Article 25. With nearly 50 million Americans uninsured, millions more underinsured, patients denied vital care and yet health care CEO's earning as much as $57,000 per hour, we are certainly not treating health as a human right.

The profit-based, private insurance industry costs American consumers twice as much per capita as the services provided for citizens by other industrialized nations. Americans spend $7,129 per capita on health insurance and yet it does not even cover all Americans. Despite out-spending other nations, our system still leaves the U.S. ranked 38th in the world for health care. We score poorly on all major health indicators, including: life expectancy- ranked 30th, right behind Bosnia; infant mortality-ranked 46th, right behind Cuba and Guam, and we're ranked 20th out of the G20 for deaths by treatable causes.

The Socialist Party of CT advocates for the elimination of the private insurance industry and the creation instead of a national, single-payer health insurance plan; an expanded Medicare-For-All. There can be no solution to the health care crisis without eliminating the cause of the problem itself, the profit-motive of insurers. A national single-payer system would cost $300-400 billion less per year than Americans currently spend and would extend coverage to all. To learn more about such a system we would direct people to the following resources: www.vachonforcongress.blogspot.com, www.pnhp.org, www.socialistparty-usa.org/platform/humanneeds.html