health resources

Health Statistic resources

CDC coverage estimates (PDF)

Policy Almanac (many links)

John Conyers' plan proposed HR676 Bill

Great article by Sheldon Richman (excerpt below)

The economic and social-rights philosophy will not only provide leverage to expropriate Western taxpayers, it will be used by the forces of political power to condemn the relatively free countries of the world. For example, the right to health care will be interpreted as the right to equal access to medical services. A nation with a decrepit system in which everyone, theoretically, has the same access to the same low level of services would rank higher than the United States, in which there is uneven access to much better care.

Although the poorest American has better care than the people in primitive egalitarian countries, the United States stands condemned for not honoring the right to health care (sometimes called the right to health!). The WHO recently ranked America’s medical system 37th out of 191. Who ranked first? France! Second? Italy! As Twila Brase has written, “When was the last time someone chose France or Italy over America for health care?” (“WHO’s Hidden Agenda,” Ideas on Liberty, December 2000, p. 8.)

Positive rights

The distinction does not concern whether positive rights can be codified, whether resources are required to enforce them, or whether they are too expensive to implement. The difference is this: Negative rights in their very conception require no initiation of force. Positive rights do. Rights are principles for averting conflict so that individuals may live productive lives. Positive rights by their nature create conflict. Negative rights do not. For that reason, positive rights are not rights at all. Rather, they are powers assumed by government. <> Many people attracted to the positive-rights program may be motivated by concern for people living in truly appalling conditions. If they understood that those conditions are sustained by the absence of negative rights — specifically, property rights — they might see the error in their thinking.