“Nursing Facing the Loss of the Right to Universal Health Access in Spain” is a comment on the article “Moral Distress in Uninsured Health Care” by Anita Nivens and Janet Buelow (published in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 10(1): 123-125, and located at doi 10.1007/s11673-013-9425-z.).
“Since 1986, universal access to the National Health Service (NHS) is considered a human right in Spain. Informed by the principle of distributive justice (Boutain 2012), the objective of the NHS is to ensure equal access to health care resources for all citizens and residents. The NHS is one of the most important elements of the Spanish welfare state; however, this model has limitations in protecting the most vulnerable of the population due to structural factors of social inequality (gender, social class, and ethnicity, among others) (Mackenbach 2012) and the organization of the health system (e.g., people with a history of alcoholism have difficulty accessing a liver transplant). (…)”
The complete article is located at DOI 10.1007/s11673-013-9459-2 (not free access)