Does the healthcare system allocate its resources in an efficient, effective and humane manner?
In the United States, we currently ration healthcare in many ways. For example, we ration healthcare according to employment status, according to age, according to gender, according to geographic or political location, according to social relationships, according to health history and according to willingness (and ability) to battle against health insurance company bureaucracies. These forms of rationing are both inhumane and illogical. The United States currently spends far more per capita on healthcare than the rest of the “developed” world, yet the healthcare system in the United States provides relatively poor care. We believe that treating healthcare as a human right would result in less rationing — not more — because, for the same amount of money, we could buy a healthcare system that is more universal, more affordable and of higher quality. Instead of providing relatively inexpensive preventive care, we treat people who lack access to primary care in expensive hospital emergency
