Access to healthcare services should be founded on the aspects of equitability and justice. I believe that fundamental ethical values that should define access to health be focused on justice and equity. Every individual has the right to access quality care of whether they are in a position to pay or not because life is much precious than financial resources (Sade, 2012). In the US, the fundamental values as far as healthcare is concerned are that; there should be a right to health care. However, this is not the case because about 15 percent of the Americans without the health care insurance coverage do not access quality healthcare services.
Healthcare is of paramount importance for human survival hence the need to ensure that every citizen can access the services when required. Based on this, it is clear that healthcare should be right rather than a privilege. It is thus important that in all the developed countries no one should go without quality care. Arguably, a right to health care would significantly end medical bankruptcies, lower healthcare spending and at the same time enhance public health (Sade, 2012).
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United State has not articulated a right to health care in either law or policy. From the 34 OECD member states, Poland, the US and Greece are the only countries without universal health care. A shift towards the government domination was driven by the need for a right to healthcare as was articulated for the first time by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Congress in the year 1944. The debate on this issue has been ongoing for years where some people have argued that it does not exist. Despite the fact that the right to healthcare is not acknowledged in the US law, the closest approach was the health healthcare reform law of ACA (Denier, 2005).
A child from the wealthy and poor American family with similar illness should have the same access to the treatment regardless of the ability to pay. T should be the case because healthcare is the fundamental right of every citizen and financial constraints should not limit the child from a low-income family from accessing healthcare. The two have an equal right to treatment and be attended to in the most suitable way with utmost respect. The best way to ensure that this kind of equitable healthcare is successful is through the formulation and implementation of a policy that would focus on universal healthcare care to every citizen (Koh & Sebelius, 2010).
The right to healthcare policy would help enforce the practice, and this would ensure that every child irrespective of their financial position access quality care. The role of the government should be to enforce and ensure there is the full implementation of the right to healthcare care. According to Koh & Sebelius, (2010), the government would also be responsible for paying the healthcare bills from the taxes collected from the citizens. I am more than willing to contribute towards paying for improving access to care for other because I believe that life is a gift from God and should be protected at all cost.
ACA is based on various ethical assumptions including ethics for the emergency physicians. Based on this ethics, a doctor is required to embrace the welfare of the patient as the professional responsibility and communicate with patient truthfully. Further, he or she must respond promptly without prejudice to patient’s needs, respect the privacy of the patient and work cooperatively with medical practitioners handling emergency patients (Hammaker, Knadig & Tomlinson, 2016). The ACA provides a refundable and advances able credit for lower-income individuals to purchase health insurance. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (2017) clearly focused on how the Affordable Care Act works using animated movie. In the movie, the producers explains major problems that have continuously faced the present healthcare system, current changes being experienced and major changes in the future. Since its passage in 2010, ACA has significantly encouraged a wider participation in the health insurance market and reduced the number of uninsured persons.
According to Jones, Bradley & Oberlander, (2014), the Republicans are opposed the ACA because their fiscal policy goal has been to reduce taxes on high incomes, but Obama care does the opposite. Therefore, according to them, expanding health insurance would be very expensive for the government. Republicans have always hated taxes. They also happen to think that it is not the role of government to provide universal health insurance. This is why they were so desperate to stop the passage of the law in the first place.
References
Denier, Y. (2005). On personal responsibility and the human right to healthcare. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , 14 (02), 224-234.
Hammaker, D. K., Knadig, T. M., & Tomlinson, S. J. (2016). Health Care Ethics and the Law . Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Jones, D. K., Bradley, K. W., & Oberlander, J. (2014). Pascal's Wager: health insurance exchanges, Obamacare, and the Republican dilemma. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law , 39 (1), 97-137.
Koh, H. K., & Sebelius, K. G. (2010). Promoting prevention through the affordable care act. New England Journal of Medicine , 363 (14), 1296-1299.
Sade, R. M. (2012). Health care reform: Ethical foundations, policy, and law. Journal of the American College of Surgeons , 215 (2), 286.
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (2017). Health Reform Hits Main Street . Retrieved from http://kff.org/health-reform/video/health-reform- hits-main- street/
