Terry Reynolds said that it is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right, the subject of Reynolds’ atturances was healthcare. Different people and governments have various opinions about healthcare, some of which align while others differ. An array of healthcare policies have been formulated and implemented, for example, the Medicaid and Obamacare policies under former President Obama, Nonetheless, people responded differently to the two policies. This paper strives to analyze three opinions that different individuals had during a discussion on the topic of healthcare. The sentiments include the belief that there lacks a clear definition of healthcare as a human right thereby confounding the debate and making the problem difficult to address, healthcare costs increasing as a consequence of disparities, and that US economic crisis is related to Medicare/Medicaid and Obamacare, policies that put the country on the verge of bankruptcy.
No Clear Cut Definition of Healthcare as a Human Right
The lack of a clear definition of healthcare as a human right makes it difficult to address the problem. It becomes challenging to give a general interpretation of the right to life (Krennerich, 2017). The fact that every individual deserves the highest attainable health standards to lead a life in human dignity does not mean that one is legally guaranteed to be healthy. It would be complicated to offer such guarantees since human health depends on factors that are out of the control of the government (Krennerich, 2017). However, the government needs to ensure that preconditions created to make every appropriate level of healthcare accessible are feasible. Although there are limits to what the government can afford and provide. While it may be challenging to impose healthy living onto someone, failure to make healthcare a human right brings about situations such as hospitals letting patients die just because they could not afford the cost, as states by William, the former firefighter. On the other hand, making healthcare a human right means nobody gets to pay for it since it becomes a right, and consequently, there would be no one to dissipate the care as Michael says in the video. Therefore, conflicting ideas make it difficult to address the issue.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Disparities and Healthcare Cost
Inequalities increase the cost of healthcare. The phenomenon limits the overall improvements in the quality of healthcare in the USA, which leads to unnecessary expenses. Analysis indicates that healthcare disparities amount to 100 million US dollars in excess medical care costs (Orgera & Artiga, 2018). According to the National Institute of Health, in a study carried out on diabetes in California in 2014, it was estimated that $ 225 million could be saved every year in the North California Medicaid program if racial and economic disparities were eliminated. Besides, other findings also indicated that the healthcare cost problems experienced by the US government are to a substantial amount, health disparity problems. Therefore, based on these pieces of evidence, it becomes clear that health disparities have a significant role to play in the high cost of healthcare in the country.
Economic Crisis concerning Medicare/Medicaid and Obamacare Health Policies
The economic crisis in the USA is, to some extent, related to the Medicare/Medicaid and Obamacare policies. However, it is agreeable from the preceding that the country faces bankruptcy should the healthcare system fail to be fixed. In the video, the proponent of Obamacare, Dr. Pham acknowledges that in as much as the policy intended to provide affordable free healthcare, there exist certain levels the government may not attain since they would be costly. It means that, however much the government may spend, it would not adequately provide free and affordable quality healthcare as it would be overstretched.
Consequently, without proper implementations, such a policy can nudge a country into a financial crisis. Additionally, failure to fix the healthcare system and reduce to a significant level or eradicate the disparities would mean that healthcare would remain costly, and more money would be lost through it, which would lead to bankruptcy. The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare benefited several Americans through the reduction of personal bankruptcies by about 50% (Allen, 2017). Therefore, the polarity of opinion towards the healthcare system contributes to the opposition facing current health care policies.
References
Allen, S., J. (2017). How the Affordable Care Act Drove Down Personal Bankruptcy. Expanded health insurance helped cut the number of filings by half. Retrieved from: https://www.consumerreports.org/personal-bankruptcy/how-the-aca-drove-down-personal-bankruptcy/
Krennerich, M. (2017). The Human Right to Health.: Fundamentals of a Complex Right. In Klotz S., Bielefeldt H., Schmidhuber M., & Frewer A. (Eds.), Healthcare as a Human Rights Issue: Normative Profile, Conflicts and Implementation (pp. 23-54). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Retrieved January 18, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1fxf7w.4
Orgera, K. & Artiga S. (2018). Disparities in Health and Health Care: Five Key Questions and Answers. Retrieved from https://www.kff.org/disparities-policy/issue-brief/disparities-in-health-and-health-care-five-key-questions-and-answers/
