Americans know their rights. This spirit of America is older than America itself.
Our Founding Fathers knew that they were being denied their rights as natural-born English citizens, and they fought to restore them. African-Americans knew that they had an inherent right derived from their Maker to not be the property of another man.
Women knew that their voices were just as sacred and inspiring as those of men.
Even greater than these, however, are certain rights that transcend nationality, culture, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Thomas Jefferson referred to these rights as “unalienable” in the Declaration of Independence.
Some rights are so essential and so imperative to the human experience that to deny them is a sin against our own desire to live in peace and prosperity.
Among these unalienable rights should be access to healthcare for all individuals, regardless of income.
Not many things are more stressful or degrading to the human experience than being sick and not having access to the best health care available to an individual.
Millions die from treatable diseases every year because they do not have the money or access to the treatments they need.
What does this say about us as a nation, when we let our brothers and sisters everywhere die from treatable diseases because our fists are too tight around our own wealth?
The countless people dying without access to adequate care sometimes seem like a number to us, but these people have faces, names and stories.
They have dreams, potential, and a desire to better themselves. Yet every day, the free and wealthy societies of our world march together hand in hand in the pursuit of happiness while turning a blind eye to those reaching out and wishing to march with them. These are our people and we are leaving them behind.
I’m sick of leaving behind my brothers and sisters around the world who do not have access to health care.
Happiness is something that Jefferson and our nation’s founders understood as a right of all people.
Everyone deserves a chance at the best of the human experience within whatever culture they live, and health care is a universal right as a means to help them from keeping that experience from being cut short.
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