Case Study Project

Introduction

The topic of health and wealth is one that has been discussed in a myriad of settings ever since the days of yore. For centuries now, scholars and practitioners have either challenged or backed this statement with economists arguing that they are linked intermittently while sociology practitioners deny the claim. It is imperative to note that humanity has made great strides ever since the theory was developed with a broad cornucopia of techniques being set up that allow people to live longer and healthier lives.

Au contraire, the rising access to medication and interventions is linked intermittently to an individual’s group ability to pay for the services due to the fact that they are rarely free (Clay, 2001). This demand for services has, in turn, led to a rise in the number of private and public insurance agencies, which, however, require people to have a stable source of income (Purnell, 2020). Personally, I am covered by my parent’s insurance, and I have to say I am one of the lucky few.  I have continuously enjoyed this privilege ever since I was a child when I would be taken to prestigious hospitals for small things like allergies or even hornet stings. I, however, grew up questioning why some of the kids in my school did not have the same benefit when it comes to healthcare. Most of the sickly kids in our school came from Latino or African American properties.

One could clearly discern the difference between the majority and minority communities based on how they looked. Over time, however, I began understanding the disparity between members of the society and how that translates into the provision of healthcare. This research study will present backing to the theory that health is wealth under the auspice of the thesis that wealthy people have the requisite disposable income that they can use to pay for healthcare services.

Analysis

My perspective of the issue is that wealth and income directly enhance a person’s health due to the fact that wealthier people are able to afford the needed resources that protect or enhance their health. Individuals who are more affluent have more disposable income compared to those who are not. On the other hand, most poor people tend to have jobs that do not pay them enough to cater for their health expenses. Those who are wealthy tend to have paid leave, better health insurance, and workplace wellness programs (Clay, 2001). Besides, they also tend to work in places that have fewer occupational hazards as compared to the poor who work in places that have a high risk of injury. As such, they can have access to medical care and also live a healthy lifestyle. Such advantages also “trickle down to their children” (Clay, 2001).

Therefore, when a person is exposed to low-income, he or she will tend to have restricted access to healthcare as they may be more likely to lack health insurance coverage. With greater financial barriers such as copayments, costs of drugs, they cannot afford the monthly health deductibles that the wealthy people can settle. Children of such poor people are less likely to be recommended for medical screenings such as cancer screening as well as vaccinations. Further, in Rebecca Clay’s “Wealth Secures Health,” the relationship between a person’s income and health indicates that “health is indeed an outcome of a person’s wealth.” Purnell (2001) is quoted as saying that “children who experience a particularly severe type of stress called “toxic stress” are also at increased risk for negative behavioral and health outcomes as adolescents and adults.”

My moment of reckoning came when I realized that not every child has the same privileges that I have. This reckoning provided me with two major core values, namely responsibility and respect. To begin with, the respect core value influences my perspective as it implores me not to judge other people based on their backgrounds. I came to learn that most people are victims of circumstance, as shown by Sapolsky (2018), who argues that “unequal societies tend to have worse quality of life.” Instead of judging the people from minority communities due to their health outcomes and lack of prevalence, I developed a desire to understand how inequality causes high rates of crime in the areas which are linked to high rates of incarceration.  Furthermore, bullying is rampant in communities with teen pregnancies being recorded (Sapolsky, 2018). The respect core value influenced my thinking further by shedding light on the numerous psychiatric problems that the impoverished are susceptible to alcoholism and drug abuse being used as distractions from the pangs of life. Sapolsky (2018) argues that minority communities are more often than not sick due to low social mobility and levels of happiness (Sapolsky, 2018).  The stress is further replicated to the children who are required to mature even before they come of age. Due to the fact that most of them lack the necessary health insurance cover, they find themselves experiencing chronic inflammation, which causes molecular damage. As a matter of fact, childhood poverty has been linked to a rise in the body’s pro-inflammatory set point in adults. This causes an increase in the inflammatory gene expressions and a rise in inflammatory markers like the C-reactive proteins, which are the main causal factors behind increased heart attacks (Sapolsky, 2018). The long term effects of childhood poverty and lack of insurance are a rise in the C reactive protein levels, which leaves the children more vulnerable to life-threatening disease (Sapolsky, 2018) s. The second core value is responsibility, whereby I took it upon myself to embrace the opportunities provided by life as a result of my high status in society. The process would involve me bridging the existent dearth of knowledge into the subject matter by developing this research paper. With insight derived from  Clay (2001), I learned that there is a way for society to handle and treat stress caused by childhood poverty. The author highlights that the best fit strategy is the adoption of a perspective wherein class is not a factor for comparison. The perspective can either be individual or collective as long as it is aimed at addressing the disparities between communities. Clay (2001) argues that “in our supposedly classless society, Storck says, people find it difficult to talk about class.”

Conclusion

In due summation, the preceding analysis explores the issue of wealth versus health from a subjective experience. The thesis presented is that wealthy people have the requisite disposable income that they can use to pay for healthcare services. The impoverished, on the other hand, are at a disadvantage as they cannot afford the money to pay for the services. The paper highlights the impact of inequality and how to address it. Now, the only complexity related to this social issue is that it is quite hard to convince people to let go of their wealth or class that they have worked hard to sustain. In addition, there is no strategy that can be used to satisfy every human being because society members have their own beliefs, values, and standards. This thereby means that as long as humans live, the class will always be a major point of comparison between the masses.

References

Clay, R. (2001). Wealth secures health.

Purnell, J. (2020). Financial Health is Public Health.

Sapolsky, R. (2018). The Health-Wealth Gap.