The Right Of Access To Healthcare: A Fundamental Right?
Whether or not we are in a pandemic period, not everyone has the same access to care. However, access to health is a fundamental right: whatever our sex, age, or gender, we are all concerned. Thanks to our video and our quiz, discover the essential concepts to better understand the challenges of this fundamental right: the right to health!
The threats weighing on the right of access to health care should increase even more in the years to come to the extent that the development of predictive medicine and the interests of insurers could lead to condition access to social and insurance benefits, to the compliance with medical or behavioral standards, moving “from the era of fatality to the era of causality.”
Paradoxically, the legal proclamation of a general and unlimited right to access to healthcare could become a factor of imbalance in the context of an expensive resource. How, indeed, to maintain access to care when “any individual, without discrimination, in particular without reference to income levels, can do so freely (by choosing his doctor, his establishment, etc.).
The question of access to healthcare lies at the heart of the contemporary contradictions that drive the French health system, caught between, on the one hand, the extreme development of public health policies, hesitating between access to care and control of health expenditure. And on the other hand, the recognized independence of physicians, the liberal nature of the practice of medicine, and the freedom to choose the practitioner.
Health systems worldwide do not provide the same care, and access is sometimes very complicated for some populations or communities. It is estimated that nearly 100 million people fall below the poverty line each year because of their health care costs.
“The principle of transparency which underlies health law is expressed not only through the recognition of a patient’s right to information, but also through the right to informed consent, and even finally through the law. access to the medical file.”
Medical Freedom – Everyone Deserves The Best Care Possible
The right to information, which conditions the right to free and informed consent to the act of health, has its roots at the heart of the principle of human freedom and the person’s right to the integrity of his body. Placed above the law, the patient’s rights to information and medical consent, which are closely linked, are, therefore, “at a very high level in the hierarchy of values and the protection of the human person.” These are fundamental human rights, the value of which is constitutionally recognized.
Everyone has the right to access all of the formalized information on which to develop the diagnosis, the follow-up of the diagnosis, and the treatment or preventive action are based.
Thus, the right to information also relates to the right to benefit from outpatient or home care when the patient’s state of health allows it, particularly when it comes to palliative care. Likewise, if, after the investigations, treatments, or preventive actions, new risks are identified, the person concerned must be informed, unless it is impossible to find him/her.