Residents in Utah without health insurance increased by 40,000 in one year.
The ranks of Utah’s uninsured grew by 1 percent between 2004 and 2005, according to a recently released report from the Utah Department of Health.
There are about 300,000 Utahns without health insurance and 46 million Americans. The latter figure includes about 8 million children. According to the Deseret News article quoted above, Gov. Jon Huntsman has created a working group to study this issue and address the root cause of the alarming fact that so many of us are without health insurance.
I have been without health insurance for most of the last decade, so I can speak from personal experience to this issue.
The “root” cause is the profit-making corporate nature of health insurance companies and health care providers, including hospitals and nursing homes.
Health care is a basic human right. It is addressed and provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which the U.S. became a signatory in 1948. To wit:
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the 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.
There is no humane reason why so many Americans, and worldwide citizens for that matter, should suffer as a result of not being able to afford health care. It’s a basic human right.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 