Canada's Universal Healthcare: A Fundamental Human Right

Everyone has the right to attain health care as it is a essential part of human rights. The provision of basic health care to all Canadians is enforced upon society. That is, every legal citizen or resident has a right to have equal access to health care. Canada’s Universal Health Care is a national health care plan that is publicly funded through taxes and government funding. Everyone should be entitled human rights without discrimination, and having sufficient living and well-being, whether they have different nationalities, sex, religion, language, or any other status. Health care is a fundamental human right as it protects the rights and freedom of individuals’. When human rights are disregarded, the social influences attempts to persuade
The Canadian health care system takes on an egalitarian liberalism approach that supports substantive equality, which eliminates undeserving barriers to give equality while protecting citizens’ rights and freedom (Wendling, 2015, P. 15). Thus, egalitarians focus on the process to reach to the end result through equity, given access to the same opportunities. With this perspective, they argue that individuals should be given human rights when they do not impose any individual the burden of unnecessary expenses. When rights are disregarded in health care, it is impossible to live a life; if one’s biological structure is not properly functioning. While a small portion of society believes in having government funding to limit their resources, majority of Canadians support the idea of having publicly funded services. On the other hand, although supporting publicly funded services, some argue that the Canadian health care system lack the delivery mechanism of health care, especially those associated with efficiency and the time of delivery (Madore, 2014, P. 317). Since health care is given equal access to everyone, it would be obvious that there would be wait times. While others argue that because of the lack of delivery mechanisms in the public health system, people prefer private sectors in which patients would have to pay for their health care, but have faster access to treatment. Privatization of
Society constructs the cultural interpretations and perceptions on health and how individuals perceive health as. The social determinants of health, such as race/ethnicity, sex, education, status, and etc, are the social and economic conditions of life (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010, P. 7). They affect health through biomedical and lifestyle risk factors. The inequalities in the social determinants of health lead to poor mental and physical health. Those subjected to poor quality social determinants of health are more likely to die from cancer, diabetes, or respiratory or cardiovascular diseases. Health is shaped by income and the distribution of wealth in society since it determines the quality of other social determinants of health, as there is a strong connection between the size of the income gap and the health of a population (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010, P. 7). The wider the gap between the rich and poor, the greater the unequal distribution of resources and the poorer the population’s overall quality of social determinants of health. With the lack of financial stability, there are many other factors that contribute to the social construction of health: insecure housing, unstable employment, food insecurity, and etc. If there are better equalities of the social determinants of health, the better the health of citizens. Therefore, governments ought to pursue policies that improve the social