Is Healthcare a Right or an Individual Responsibility?

One of the more important advantages of investing in electronic medical records is the ability to share medical information.

Americans, for many years, have been overwhelmingly against the development of medical databases like a national disease registry. They want the privacy of their medical records protected and not released to anyone without their permission(Fodor 2000) Patients’ medical records are proprietary information. That is, they are owned by the hospitals and physician practices.

These are two major obstacles to the sharing of medical information between hospitals and physicians’ offices as well as the development of a national disease registry.

The first step to resolving these two obstacles is for Americans to decide if healthcare is a right or an individual responsibility.

ECONOMIC MODELS: INDIVIDUAL VS. COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY

Interviewer: The United States underscores individual responsibility; other countries emphasize collective responsibility. Where are we headed with this? Are there acceptable options for balancing individual and collective responsibility relative to medical care?

JOHN F. McCRACKEN, PH.D.: Our nation focuses on individual rights and responsibility--individuality—more than others. Industrialized European countries, for example, emphasize collective responsibility—the collective good. That’s why they treat healthcare as a social good.

Social goods serve collective needs. There’s a sense of collective responsibility in making such goods available to all citizens. Availability depends on need and government is perceived to be more efficient at allocating these goods.
In the U.S., healthcare is viewed more as a market good. Market goods serve individual needs. There’s a sense of individual responsibility and a personal obligation to earn these goods. Availability is based on individual ability to pay. Markets are believed to be more efficient at allocating these goods.

One of our problems, unlike the rest of the world, is:
The United States has never decided whether healthcare is a social or a market good.


These are excerpts of interview with John McCracken PhD. A transcript of the full interview will be sent with the purchase of DVD of the documentary, ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS AND HEALTH REFORM. Part of transcript of his interview can be viewed on the documentary website, http://www.emr-ndr.net/index.html
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Fodor, K. (2000) "Americans Opposed to National Medical Records Database." http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/news/Sep2000/NationalMedicalRecordsDatabase.html.