Having grown up in the United States, I find it to be an inconceivable notion that healthcare could ever be free to everyone. On the contrary, the United Kingdom has a universal healthcare system called the National Health Service that provides free healthcare to all its citizens. Each citizen contributes to the National Health Service budget under general taxation. There are many benefits to issuing universal healthcare:
1. The first benefit falls under the biomedical ethics of justice. Universal healthcare means that every person has access to healthcare regardless of their economic or social status. They will be given treatments according to their health issue and not what they can afford to pay for.
2. The second benefit falls under the biomedical ethics of beneficence. Universal healthcare can provide multiple avenues for treatment. A patient will be supplied with all the information regarding the different treatments available.
According to the 2011 CDC Health Disparities and Inequality Report, better health outcomes were strongly correlated with those who had insurance coverage. Insurance coverage should not be the determining factor for a patient’s quality of life. Physicians swear the Hippocratic Oath “to treat the ill to the best of one’s ability.” However, how can we provide the utmost care to a patient if we are limited to what insurance companies will pay for? As a physician, we should only focus on the care of the whole person and not have to look up an insurance company’s policy for coverage rate on a procedure or medication.
Not only is insurance coverage variable in terms of its coverage for visits to the physician’s office, but there is also a disparity in coverage for life saving medication such as insulin. Insulin has been rising in cost and it is all due to pharmaceutical politics and the inability of insurance companies to compensate. Why is it that patients with diabetes should have to choose between their medication and daily necessities? Healthcare is an indisputable asset that should be entitled to each citizen as free and fully funded. That way, physicians can provide the best treatment to improve a patient’s quality of care.
References:
Roosa Tikkanen, Tikkanen, R., Osborn, R., Mossialos, E., Djordjevic, A., Wharton, G. A. (n.d.). England. Home, from https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy-center/countries/england.
I enjoyed reading this post because this is such an important topic, but a very sad reality. The United States spends the most money per capita on healthcare compared to other wealthy countries (Kamal et al., 2020). On average, the United States spends $10,996 per person on healthcare, which is nearly double the amount comparable countries spend per person (2020). It is disheartening to know so many Americans do not have access to adequate and affordable care, even though the United States has lots of medical resources. The insurance system in the United States is set up to earn profit, rather than maximizing the amount of affordable care a person could receive. There is different government regulation of insurance coverage and hospital rates in European countries, which is an influential factor in the overall cost and access to healthcare for Americans (Khazan, 2019).
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Kamal, R., Ramirez, G., & Cox, C. (2020, December 23). How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries?Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-count ries/.
Khazan, O. (2019, April 11). Why Europeans don't get huge medical bills. The Atlantic. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/do-europeans-get-big-medical-bills/5 86906/.
This is an important aspect of working in healthcare that goes past the just understanding the way the body works, but also understanding how a person’s environment is affects their ability to get their medication and quality of care they need. It is a very sad part of living in America and I think another important aspect to address about this topic is how healthcare providers are put in a unfair position of being unable to provide proper care to everyone due treatments not being able to covered be covered insurance. People are forced to worry about money before their wellbeing and It really does put a price on life. It is wrong especially in an environment like the medical field that is supposed to be built ethics and humanity to have money in the center
ReplyDelete1. https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/the-u-s-healthcare-system-is-broken-a-national-perspective