Affordable Healthcare: Need or a Want
Affordable Healthcare
Affordable healthcare coverage is a job-based healthcare program that covers staff and costs 9 percent of the total income of the employees. The primary goal of the affordable care act is to achieve universal health coverage through the facilitation of citizens, employers, and the government (Isola & Reddivari, 2019). Other goals involve making healthcare affordable while reducing unnecessary spending and increasing the quality of care. the act hence emphasizes preventive and primary care of the citizens. It requires legal residents and US citizens to purchase health coverage to increase the pool of enrolled healthy individuals.
One might imagine someone falling sick and staying at home due to a lack of health insurance that may allow them to see a doctor and go through diagnosis and treatment on the same. One can imagine an elder person who may need certain drugs but the Medicaid or Medicare does not cover the specific medication required. One can also imagine a parent who has a sick child and not having the chance to help the baby hence watching them sicker because they can’t afford the charges of insurance covers. Many Americans face this problem as they do not have affordable healthcare and hence hindering them from quality treatment options in the hospital setting (McIntyre & Song, 2019). Health is an important foundation of life and when people do not have access to good health, their lives become less worthy than that of someone who has access and can afford the best care. Accessing affordable healthcare in the US is an ongoing major issue that has created major debates and concerns for the citizens.
A major ethical concern is giving citizens affordable healthcare as they ought to be allowed to take actions that help them remain in good health. Universal healthcare is deemed an obligation and a desirable aspect in the case that people consider life as a right and that the government should facilitate the right within a set of reasonable limits. The principle of beneficence involves the acts of being kind and when people die due to lack o access to healthcare, there arise ethical concerns on the decision-making process of healthcare facilities on care provision. The government is obligated to pass policies and laws that grant citizens the main services of better healthcare. The issue is that more deaths are being observed due to inadequate access to healthcare as they wish to get well. For example, Barrack Obama informed people on how his mother died of cancer as the insurance firms failed to cover the medical treatment, she needed due to the condition of the cancer being a preexisting condition. This could be ethically wrong as she might have died while the help she needed was available.
The affordable healthcare issue in the US arose due to the continued increase in the costs of treatment (Isola & Reddivari, 2019). Many presidential administrations from the past to present have tried to create a form of healthcare reforms. Clinton, Bush, and Nixon played a major role in bringing change in the US healthcare system. After the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Act, healthcare became a major concern and issue affecting the citizens of the US since 2010 (Isola & Reddivari, 2019). Several politicians have felt that ethics do not play a major part in the healthcare delivery systems and yet a major alternative is letting citizens die as professionals sit back. The PPACA bill was passed ensuring that all American citizens had health covers and those objecting to the law could be fined.
A crucial right is recognizing the basic human needs that include healthcare. All people deserve a level that enables them to be productive and maintain health while healthcare professionals require maximum compensation. In the US, politicians had the feeling that the AHA only had an impact on the healthcare system and made insurance firms lower their prices while costing the government a lot of money due to the requirement of supplementing subsidies. In this case, the alternative involves allowing the people to not afford medications and doctors’ visits that may aid in their survival. The ongoing debate on the access to affordable and universal healthcare is justice based but the principle of justice is manifested in the fears that people have on the possibility of healthcare rationing by the government.
The affordable healthcare stakeholders including the government, doctors, healthcare insurers, and doctors, are the foremost people to aid the American citizens. People in the USA want to have better and affordable healthcare and take care of themselves as well as their families at large. Healthcare insurance that takes the entire salary of individuals ought to be avoided making people live without affordable care. people in the US have paid up to $360 in a month for healthcare insurance despite having no families. This means that the rates would go up if they had kids or even a spouse. The high rates hence present a burden to most of the families leading to a low quality of life due to reduced care delivery and accessibility. The problem has been experienced in many households daily. The elderly might also live without the benefits of the SSI and have limitations on other services other than the living expenses they earn every month (Health is a fundamental human right, 2017). It is unethical for the government to assume that accessing affordable healthcare is a mere need and not want while it sits back without providing any interventions to save its people.
The main question here remains on how the ethical issue can be fixed as it seems to have a wrong or a right answer. There is a lot of dilemma and challenges on the ethical principles behind ensuring that every person can access affordable and quality care. The government can aid in this by requiring all the insurers to set prices that can fit the incomes of people although this may incur other unexpected costs. The extend of beneficence, access to care, and the power of patients to make informed choices is essentially affected by how providers are compensated. The government may also provide free care services to the citizens as it is in Canada. The free care delivery can help citizens have access to healthcare needs and acquire a personalized type of care ensuring that the death rates are minimal and satisfaction levels are high. The choice of giving someone an option to live a healthy and longer life provides a crucial strategy towards rethinking the provision of affordable or free care to people towards saving their lives and hence ethically, governments should invest in saving the lives of people despite their challenges in paying for healthcare services at the time of need.
References
Isola, S., & Reddivari, A. K. R. (2019). Affordable Care Act (ACA). In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
Health is a fundamental human right. (2017, December 12). Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/fundamental-human-right/en/
McIntyre, A., & Song, Z. (2019). The US Affordable Care Act: Reflections and directions at the close of a decade.