HJBR Sep/Oct 2025

“Am I a part of the cure? Or am I part of the disease?” — Coldplay If you are reading this letter, you are in a position of healthcare leadership. Congratulations. It is a high calling. From the beginning, our journal has asked: Is healthcare a right or a privilege? Many stumble over this question for economic reasons. Today in the U.S., if you are sick or seeking care, the first question you face is not “How can we help you?” but “How will you pay?” That layer of stress is so deeply embedded in American life that we hardly question it anymore. But if you have been on the receiving end of care, you know how wrong it feels. Here is what I now believe: Capitalism does not belong in the sacred space of healthcare. Removing capitalism from care does not mean providers won’t live well or that innovation will stop. It simply means that payment should no longer be the gatekeeper of care. It means we should finally decide, as a nation, that access to healthcare is as fundamental as the right to free speech or the right to vote. Healthcare Is Self-Evident — A Declaration and a Call for the 28th Amendment If I were to declare healthcare as a right in the spirit of our nation’s founding, it would begin like this: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that health is the foundation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that access to care, without fear of ruin or debt, is essential to human dignity; and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among us, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever the cost of care becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to demand a system that heals without burden, and a nation that protects the sick as surely as it protects the free. And if I were to write it formally into our Constitution, it would read: Amendment XXVIII Section 1. Every person in the United States shall have the right to access healthcare, including preventive, emergency, mental health, and ongoing medical care, without regard to their ability to pay. Section 2. No person shall be subjected to financial penalty, undue debt, or liability as a condition of receiving healthcare. Section 3. The Congress and the States shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation. Yes, this would be a profound shift. For many, it may feel like an intrusion of government into one of life’s most intimate spaces — the relationship between patient and provider. But the truth is, government is already in the room. It enforces insurance markets. It dictates billing rules. It protects profit structures that leave patients burdened with debt. What if that role changed? What if government’s job was not to enforce the economics of illness, but to ensure the economics never stood in the way of healing? What if its only role in that space was to guarantee that no one was asked first how they would pay, but instead how they could be helped? That is the shift: from government as overseer of a market, to government as protector of a human right. Imagine howmuch lighter our lives would feel without the weight of medical debt. Imagine howmuch better our communities could thrive if people were free to get and stay healthy without fear of financial ruin. Imagine the trust restored between patients and providers when money was no longer the first barrier between them. This is the “tiger waiting to be tamed” — and perhaps why we exist at this time. Dianne Marie Normand Hartley Chief Editor editor@healthcarejournalbr.com 8 SEP / OCT 2025  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE   EDITOR’S DESK