Most countries consider healthcare as being a human right rather than a privilege. For instance, just as it is a human right to receive basic education, protection from fire and other calamities, provision of clean water among others, these countries provide their residents with universal healthcare coverage. However, for most Americans have mixed reactions when it comes to whether healthcare should be declared as a right or privilege. Some liken healthcare coverage provided as a right to citizens as a way of making the monopolizing the single-payer model which has been the problem with declaring health care as a right because it does not necessarily have to be a single-payer.
Hoffman (2008) believes that how American residents and policymakers argue out this debate is greatly influenced by whether they are conservatives or not. Conservatives interest is to protect the status quo and advocate that the health care system should be left as it is or even going back to pre-ACA policies and rules. Non conservartives interest is to provide solutions to the current problems facing the healthcare system. Below are my thoughts for why I believe health care should be a right or a privilege:
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
According to the constitution of the world health organization, the right to health is among the fundamental rights of all human beings. My thoughts are that this has been an accepted concept internationally with most countries implementing this concept for quite a long time. It is upon the US government to figure out how to configure how its universal coverage should be implemented and how it is paid for. Delivering the right to health can be unique as long as every citizen has some form of health coverage (Braveman & Gruskin, 2003).
While everybody deserves healthcare, some limits make healthcare a right only to a certain extent. Although it is in the interest of the American people to offer healthcare benefits as a right, there seems to be a concession that that there are limits to that right and therefore, we can only provide healthcare as a right to a particular point. Braveman & Gruskin (2003) note that economically, it is not possible to offer the best healthcare coverage to all people. Reason being healthcare is quite expensive and providing it free of charge without attaching a value to it would be impossible and would derail developments in other sectors of the economy.
Essentially, while healthcare is a limited resource with limited supply, it has unlimited demand, therefore, mixing the two would create economic problems. On top of the most basic healthcare, there must be a value attached to services offered or we risk collapsing costly services that are above the most basic healthcare. Health care as a privilege means that healthcare insurance is available to everybody as long as one can afford it. According to Hoffman (2008), availing healthcare insurance to those who can afford it make more sense than providing health insurance to everyone as it would be the case when healthcare is a right. Having an insurance coverage would not guarantee affordable and timely access to healthcare, and that would be the problem with making it a right.
Having healthcare as a privilege rather than a right limits governments interference with private business. The same way government does not involve itself with other forms of insurances such as home and car insurance it should not fiddle with medical care. We are a free market country, and we should stay that way. While free health care can work in our country just like in other countries, ACA needs some fixing and the underlying problems solved. While I strongly believe and support healthcare is a right, we must figure out how the new system should look like in terms of leaving it as a free market and how to pay for it.
The ambulatory pre-op area is a crucial area where the care providers collect crucial patients' information as well as offering the patient the relevant education before undergoing surgery. Regardless of the relevance of this activity, there are reports by different surgery centers that due to time and human resource constraints, the trend at which this activity has been neglected is increasing at alarming rates. With health care as a right, more patients who previously could not afford surgery services would now access these services. Universal health care coverage or rather the expansion of insurance coverage will automatically lead to human resource constraints as more patients will increase. Therefore, the value of universal healthcare coverage will be determined by the balance between measurable medical benefits and increased expenditure derived from greater access to healthcare.
References
Braveman, P., & Gruskin, S. (2003). Defining equity in health. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health , 57 (4), 254-258.
Hoffman, B. (2008). Health care reform and social movements in the United States. American Journal of Public Health , 98 (Supplement_1), S69-S79.
