Special guest post by Nicholas J. Diamond
In Part I, I argued that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), while a monumental step toward improving health care in the U.S., does not fully advance the right to health in a few key respects. Responding to shortcomings in the ability of the ACA to fully advance the right is, in my view, a matter of coalescing domestic health policymaking around the right to health.
Full advancement of the right to health in the U.S. requires a normative commitment to the content of the right as articulated in General Comment 14 and related instruments. This commitment requires internalization of human rights-based norms in domestic health policymaking. Such a commitment would not only encourage the consensus required to design appropriate domestic health policies, but also provide valuable guiding principles to shepherd implementation.
Given the current political climate around the ACA, coupled with an ongoing Presidential election, statutory amendment of the ACA in order to more fully advance the right to health is highly unlikely. What is more, reliance on the rulemaking process to advance the right to health, absent an appropriate statutory foundation, would be misplaced because agency rulemaking authority is itself a statutory construct.
In the alternative, ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) could provide just such a commitment. The U.S. is, however, very unlikely to ratify the ICESCR as an Article II treaty. Historically, the U.S. has been reluctant to commit to international human rights instruments and the current Administration has expressed its intention not to pursue ratification (at least as an Article II treaty). Absent ratification, through which international norms are internalized in national policies, it remains unlikely that the right to health becomes a guiding norm in U.S. health policymaking. Read More