Every person worldwide expects to live a healthy in case some misfortune happens and they become ill. This is not often the case, individuals with more wealth have an easier access to medical services whereas those with less income have a limited access to better healthcare (Moffit et al, 2011). This is partially because health has been equated to wealth, where better medical equipment and the best medical practitioners are expensive to access their services thereby living it to the wealthy who can afford.
A country economic prowess may improve the population’s health but it may not reduce the disparity between the rich and the poor. Therefore, proving it difficult to eliminate the link between wealth and health. Although there are various quarters that argue that, although people have the right to access better healthcare, the health services should be on the same level. This may be because of transacting business where industries sell medical equipment at huge prices, and for private hospitals to make profits. Hence creating a situation where wealth becomes a determining factor in the accessibility of healthcare.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The access of better healthcare only by the rich in the community created the need for drastic measures to be put in place to address health inequality issues in the community. This resulted to the creation of social health policy to oversee that health was accessible to everyone and not limited to the less fortunate in the community (Phelan et al, 2010). This policy included measure such as reducing fees levied in public health facilities while at the same time increasing the number of medical practitioners in the facilities. Resources are also redistributed equally to the population so as to reduce a situation where some have the resources to access healthcare and some don’t.
To meet the health demands of a country, it is ideal to first tackle the risk factors that have a causative effect on poor healthcare. Improving the social security and housing the homeless and low-income earners are some of the social policy initiatives that go greater miles to positively influence the health of a community.
It is prudent to accept that there exists a disparity in our health sector. This is so because certain trends show that better health revolves around how much wealthy an individual is. Therefore, resulting to a situation where only the rich can access quality healthcare while the poor are limited to poor healthcare. Social policies have been initiated to minimize the health disparity that exists between the rich and the less fortunate. The social policies have had a positive effect in the provision of healthcare, although much effort needs to be put in place to exhaust this issue fully and do away with the notion of wealth is health.
References
Moffit,T. E., Arsenault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., … & Sears, M. R. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 ( 7), 2693-2698.
Phelan, J.C., Link, B. G., & Tehranifar, P. (2010). Social conditions as fundamental causes of health inequalities: theory, evidence, and policy implications. Journal of health and social behavior, 51( 1_suppl), S28-S40.
