༺ Income Inequality in Healthcare: Here’s What I Think ༻
“Healthcare is for people not for profit!”
Now that I’ve accumulated all the information, let’s get down to what I personally think about this. For this, I would like to revisit my previous blog posts, a two part series titled “Capitalism vs Economic Failure”. All in all, my own opinions aligns most with the second part of the blog post series which talked about the side of the argument that pushes for a better healthcare system rather than leaving it up to citizens to look for higher paying jobs.
I understand the two different solutions can sound very similar & ultimately, both solutions at first glance sound like they both end up giving citizens the same result, which is a healthcare system that they can afford. However, to differentiate the two, the first half of the two part series explains the benefits of keeping our healthcare system as is, but opts to reform our economic situation by raising the average annual earnings around the nation. The latter half of the series explains that the reformation of our healthcare system should be our first priority in tackling the healthcare quality disparities brought on by the lack of being able to afford its services.
One example that shows why I side with this argument is taken from Frances Cairncross’ article “Age, Health & Wealth” where Cairncross talks about the increase in life expectancies within elderly people, which in turn would require that healthcare either be free or that senior citizens return to work. Longer lifespans means a longer need for reliable healthcare which means a need for a larger amount of retirement money. However, Cairncross mentions that most people retire in their 50’s & 60’s which is typically when working becomes difficult for the elderly. This is where the government’s choice to invest into the healthcare system would greatly benefit us.
In an article by Roosa Tikkanen & Melinda K. Abrams titled “U.S Healthcare From a Global Perspective”, it is shown that despite being one the countries with the highest income rates, the U.S has one of the lowest life-expectancies & the highest suicide rates amongst the 11 nations. Not only that, but the U.S also has the highest number of hospitalization due to preventable causes & has the highest rates of deaths that could’ve easily been avoided, but due to things like patients not being able to afford high-quality healthcare, they weren’t. A lot of these unfortunate situations & casualties seem to directly trace back to the lack of affordability for high-quality healthcare services.
In the first post of the two, I revealed one side of the argument that opted to expand the economy by opening up more job opportunities which in turn would benefit people who can not already afford coverage & other healthcare services. Though I do agree that economic expansion would greatly benefit citizens, the issue at hand here is a healthcare system that has always been for profit rather than the for the lives of the people it’s supposed to help. To put it simply, if we were to completely disregard the capitalism going on within our healthcare system by providing people with more money to afford its services, we are basically accommodating to the issue rather than actually fixing it.
