{"id":229550,"date":"2025-07-01T14:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T14:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/229550\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T14:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T14:47:09","slug":"why-its-so-easy-for-the-us-to-cut-childrens-access-to-healthcare-theres-no-right-to-these-programs-health-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/229550\/","title":{"rendered":"Why it\u2019s so easy for the US to cut children\u2019s access to healthcare: \u2018There\u2019s no right to these programs\u2019 | Health policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every school year, midwife Lisa Isman meets dozens of eighth graders for an annual tour of the clinic where she works. Students gather first in the office\u2019s waiting room, where neon green couches, young adult romance novels and pamphlets on loneliness and sexual wellness greet them. On the tour of the Ungdomsmottagning \u2013 Swedish for \u201cyouth clinic\u201d \u2013 the students in this suburb of Stockholm, Sweden<\/a>, will take a peek at the different exam rooms, meet clinic counselors, and pay a visit to the clinic\u2019s \u201ckondomeria\u201d, a cupboard decorated with condoms posed like action figures and stocked with a variety of brands.<\/p>\n

The required school tour is an opportunity for Isman and her colleagues to explain to students that, from ages 12 to 22, this is their clinic. And \u201cthey can decide for themselves\u201d whether to book an appointment, with or without their parents\u2019 involvement, Isman says.<\/p>\n

At the youth clinic \u2013 one of 300 such spaces across the country \u2013 teenagers and young adults can schedule appointments or come to walk-in hours to discuss puberty, period pain, contraception, abortion, anxiety, depression, and a variety of other health concerns.<\/p>\n

Youth access to healthcare is guaranteed, Isman says, because \u201cin Sweden, the [UN Convention on the Rights of the Child] is now becoming a law, so we are obliged to follow the law\u201d.<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s right to healthcare is not similarly protected in the US. A fact experts say is apparent in the federal budget currently under debate, which would see significant cuts to programs that help low income children afford food and healthcare, like Medicaid, the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program (Chip) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no right to these programs,\u201d said Jonathan Todres, a leading expert on children\u2019s rights and law professor at Georgia State University College of Law. \u201cMedicaid, Chip, those all support millions of children, but they don\u2019t establish a right. So at any time the government can choose to cut these programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medicaid and Chip provide health coverage<\/a> to two in five US children, while Snap provides meals<\/a> to one in five. The current budget would cut $863.4bn from Medicaid and Chip, and $300bn from Snap, over the next decade. Although children under the age of 18 make up about 22% of the US population, Todres notes that spending on youth only amounts to about 10% <\/a> of the federal budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe right to healthcare is critical and it\u2019s very much under threat in the United States right now for children, and for adults,\u201d said Elizabeth Barnert, a pediatrician and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Because children don\u2019t vote, she fears they are often forgotten in policy, but says the health ramifications of poor access to healthcare \u201care lifelong and generational\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 1989, the UN adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child \u2013 a treaty recognizing children\u2019s human right to, among other things, play, live free from violence and receive healthcare. In the ensuing years, every UN member country would adopt the convention \u2013 making it the most widely ratified of the body\u2019s treaties \u2013 except the US. Although the US signed the treaty in 1995, it never submitted it to the Senate for ratification.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think for many people\u201d that fact \u201cbecomes even more puzzling when they learn that the United States had a larger impact on the drafting of [the convention] than any other country,\u201d said Todres, who notes the convention was drafted during the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush. \u201cThe US stamp is all over this treaty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason the US has long been reluctant to ratify the convention, he believes, is multilayered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, the US has always been slow to join human rights treaties. It is typically very active in the creation of human rights treaties, but more cautious when it comes to taking on legal obligations,\u201d Todres said, noting that the US took 40 years to decide whether to ratify the Genocide Convention. He adds that the US is often wary that such treaties might challenge its sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Another reason he identifies is a \u201cmuch broader culture war\u201d around parents\u2019 and children\u2019s rights in the US, that he believes relies on an inaccurate understanding of children\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

The parental rights movement in the US is perhaps today best known for conservative efforts to ban teachers from discussing sexuality and gender identity in schools. But proponents have long campaigned for parents\u2019 rights to determine what their children learn, from withdrawing their children from integrated schools<\/a> in the 1950s to beginning homeschool coalitions in an effort to avoid sexual education curriculum<\/a> in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Although Republican administrations were highly involved in drafting the children\u2019s rights convention, conservative social groups quickly came to oppose it. In 1999, the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Christian advocacy group focused on the rights of parents who homeschool their children, wrote<\/a> that \u201cwar was declared on parental rights in America\u201d when the US government sent the UN convention to the Senate.<\/p>\n

It said ratifying the treaty would be a \u201ca direct attack on parents\u2019 rights to choose the form of education and content of education for their children\u201d and that the convention would \u201coutlaw spanking\u201d, give \u201cchildren the right to listen to rock music\u201d and create a right to privacy that would \u201cinvalidate all parental notification laws concerning abortion\u201d.<\/p>\n

At Isman\u2019s clinic in Stockholm, she says: \u201cWe do have parents now that they don\u2019t want their girls to come to our youth clinic because we talk about things they don\u2019t want their girls to know about,\u201d said Isman, who estimates about 90% of the clinic\u2019s patients are female. \u201cYou have to try to find ways to talk to those parents and also try to find ways for those kids that are not allowed to come here. How do we reach them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Isman and her fellow midwives might spend a day helping a young adult choose a method of birth control or schedule an abortion. Down the hall, her social worker and psychologist colleagues might screen teens navigating their mental health for abuse by asking if they\u2019ve ever been spanked or prevented from taking prescribed medications. Both are services that are often difficult to access \u2013 or even illegal \u2013 in the US.<\/p>\n

Although Sweden has implemented the UN convention in a way that allows children to access contraceptive and sexual health counseling, including sometimes abortion care, without parental consent, Todres doesn\u2019t imagine the US would do the same, and says the convention leaves enforcement up to each country that ratifies it. He believes controversial health debates that impact only a small number of children, like abortion and gender-affirming care, have distracted from the larger areas where most parents would support their children having access to healthcare.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the majority of issues, parents\u2019 interests and children\u2019s rights align. If you survey parents, what do they want for their children? They want their children to be safe. They want to be able to take their child to a good doctor when the child needs it, they want the child to receive a quality education,\u201d said Todres. He adds that human rights laws \u201care designed to protect children and families from abuses by governments\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Barnert, a right to healthcare means \u201cthat every child can have their urgent and emergency needs met, and that every child has access to appropriate evidence-based preventive care\u201d.<\/p>\n

She finds the human rights framework of the UN convention particularly useful because it considers \u201ca lot of barriers that aren\u2019t the healthcare itself that interfere with patients\u2019 abilities to get healthcare\u201d, like the cost of transportation or parking, being able to take time off of work, feeling safe going to a doctor\u2019s office regardless of immigration status or accessing non-politicized, evidence-based care, like vaccines.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not likely the US will ratify the convention on the rights of the child anytime soon, Todres says. Or, that if it does so, it will implement it the same way Sweden has. <\/strong>But in the meantime, a handful of cities, including Portland<\/a>, Oregon, and Santa Cruz<\/a>, California, have adopted children\u2019s bills of rights. And with children\u2019s access to healthcare on the chopping block this year, it might be time to consider whether that access should be protected as a right.<\/p>\n

This story is part of a reporting fellowship sponsored by the Association of Health<\/a> Care Journalists and supported by the Commonwealth Fund<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every school year, midwife Lisa Isman meets dozens of eighth graders for an annual tour of the clinic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-229550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}