This paper discusses the different approaches of health care protection in a comparison between Europe and the United States. After an historical introduction over constitutional documents and social rights’ definition, the paper focuses over the establishment of health care services in European systems. The United States did not consider health’s protection as a right, until the PPACA (2010) required all Americans to buy health insurance and introduced strict regulations for health insurers. The traditional approach has started to change, even though there has been two necessary Supreme Court’s rulings to prevent the new health care reform from being set aside.
The change in the welfare State had raised some interesting questions. What does the right to health care mean today? Is it a right, a fundamental right or a benefit? A possible answer involves synchronic and diachronic comparisons but only an historical research approach seems appropriate to understand the current situation and what might be the future.
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