Social Justice In Health Care Essay

In 2010, the United States created The Affordable Care Act (ACA). The objective was to share the responsibility of costs between the government, individuals, and employers to provide affordable access to quality health insurance. “However, health coverage remains fragmented, with numerous private and public sources, as well as wide gaps in insured rates across the U.S. population.” (“United States: International Health Care System Profiles,” n.d.). Each individual state within the US, generally has control over private insurance.

Financial burdens greatly limit the system’s accessibility; however, many in the U.S. are unable to fully utilize either option. Census estimates from 1999 indicate that 43 million Americans live without health insurance even though 75 percent of them have a full-time job or live in a household with at least one member working full-time (Mueller, , 5) In addition to the totally uninsured, census estimates also reveal that approximately 42 million other people in the U.S. are underinsured. This means that they have some insurance, but are still unable to afford all of their needed prescriptions, tests, visits to physicians, or hospital

Widening economic inequality in the United States is being accompanied by increasing health care disparity. While the health care system seeks to provide health care as a human right, it fails to do so often worsening the disparities (Dickman, Himmelstein, & Woolhandler, 2017). While health care today has made major strides, there are many people who are still suffering from health care system injustices. Of the people who are still uninsured a majority of them are in the middle-working class or those living in poverty. Poor Americans have less access to health care than wealthy Americans. The life expectancy gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. Health care in poor communities is too often neglected. This issue has been a trend in the United States for many years. In Abraham’s book, Mama might be better off dead these very same inequalities are evident for the Banes family. Because of these inequalities, preventive illness becomes life threatening causing care to then become extensive and even more expensive.

The US has recently adopted a healthcare policy aimed to get more Americans insured. This policy is named the Affordable Care Act in 2010. “In 2013 there were 42 million uninsured individuals in the United States. “(The Common, pg. 153) There has since been increase in individuals who are covered either by private insurance or by Medicaid/Medicare which had a coverage increase with the new policy. It is believed that millions of people will now have health insurance compared to previous years.

Large populations of Americans are uninsured mainly because of the high cost of insurance. Majority of the uninsured are the low-income working families’. The adults represent a higher percentage of the uninsured than children. Before the law, you could be denied coverage or treatment because you had been sick in the past, be dropped mid-treatment for making a simple mistake on your application, hence, the Affordable Care Act was implemented into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barrack Obama to make sure that every American irrespective of their status will be insured and have full access to proper health care benefits, rights and protection(1). To understand the

The U.S. health care system faces challenges that indicate that the people urgently need to be reform. Attention has rightly focused on the approximately 46 million Americans who are uninsured, and on the many insured Americans who face rapid increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. As Congress and the Obama administration consider ways to invest new funds to reduce the number of Americans without insurance coverage, we must simultaneously address shortfalls in the quality and efficiency of care that lead to higher costs and to poor health outcomes. To do otherwise casts doubt on the feasibility and sustainability of coverage expansions and also ensures that our current health care system will continue to have large gaps even for those with access to insurance coverage.

Recently the Untied States top priority has been to provide accessible and affordable health care to every American. Those that lack access to coverage find it much more difficult to seek proper treatment and when they do they maybe left with astronomical medical bills. The CommanWealth Fund found that one-third or thirty three percent of Americans forgo health care because of costs and one-fifth or twenty percent are thus left with medical bills that have problems being able to pay. The federal government, through the Affordable Care Act (2010), has mandated that every person have health coverage in order

The United States spends far more money on healthcare than any other developed country and despite the large amounts spent the United States has the poorest health outcomes and highest risk factors (Stone, 2017). When compared to other countries the United States has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the largest population of obese, and the highest number of people over the age of 65 with chronic health conditions. Many health disparities exist in the country due to socioeconomic status. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) law was passed in 2009 and implemented in 2010 in an effort to decrease the number of people uninsured (Parekh, 2017). Since, 2010 the rate of uninsured people in the United States has

Health justice is a broad term. For me it means that everyone is able to receive health care despite where they are, what their background is, and how much money they have. Although this is the case, the current world health system isn’t like this. Health care is not as accessible as it should be. Many poorer, developing countries are still facing shortages of health care clinics in their area. The people in the world who do have health care, on the other hand, are the ones who are well off and have more money. Thankfully, due to the efforts of many different individuals and organizations, the healthcare system is slowly shifting over to where we want it to be. Not saying that it is perfect, we still have a long ways to go before we are able to create total health justice, but we are on our way for a world with health care that everyone is able to access and get the proper care they deserve.

As the society acknowledges the importance of human rights and dignity, the issues among the poverty, homeless, violence victims are now more considered. Although there are difference in roles between nurses from acute care, intensive care, and emergency settings nurses, community nurses engage those issues to become advocates for social justice. Health care nurses collaborate to identify strategies for incorporating social justice aims into their work environment (Johnstone, 2011). As a public nurses, there has been many researches to address vulnerability, diversity, health literacy, health care access, health care disparities and issues of particular populations such as ethnic and racial minority health, gay and lesbian health and the health of children, women and older adults (Johnstone, 2011). For example, affordable health care 2010 was implied for equitable delivery of healthcare for all individuals in United States. Although there are pro and cons on success of the system, it was aimed to promote the justice of human need to have least of health care when necessary. Among with the issues of inequality and unfairness of worldwide insurance system, this act was to provide fair access to health care. To achieve the aims of a just, accessible, affordable health care system for all, public health nurses make an effort to engage the professional advocacy.

Health care in the United States is driven by a patchwork of services and financing. Americans access health care services in a variety of ways — from private physicians’ offices, to public hospitals, to safety-net providers. This diverse network of health care providers is supported by an equally diverse set of funding streams. The United States spends almost twice as much on health care as any other country, topping $2 trillion each year. (WHO.INT 2000) However, even with overall spending amounting to more than $7,400 per person, millions of individuals cannot access the health care services they need.(Foundation 2009) So when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a the Affordable Care Act or ACA) was passed in the summer

The Behavioural or Cultural Explanation: places emphasis on the individuals and the consequences of their behaviour, when they choose to eat, drink and live healthily the inequalities will be reduced.

In public health, as in many fields there are a set of conundrums that practitioners, leaders and law makers have to address in order to provide the most appropriate service to their populations. One of these conundrums is the battle between what is good for the community vs. what is good for the individual. This topic will be broken up to the community vs. the individual, and discussed based on research done by Kass et al, and Oriola, and will be concluded by presenting possible solutions.

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century the United States has always had a realization that there was a problem with obtaining affordable health insurance. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare, was signed into law in March 2010. This law enables people who were unable to afford healthcare the ability to obtain a healthcare plan at an affordable rate. In 2009 a survey was taken as to the amount of people in the United States that carried health insurance. In table one below you can see over 50 million people in the United States did not have any type of insurance, which is close to 17 percent of the population (see table 1 below). “According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “32%

A social inequality in the world is access to healthcare for all individuals. Impacting Access to? healthcare is explained by socioeconomic factors. They are uninsured a disadvantage to healthcare quality and being able to utilize it. Social stratification is the classification of representatives who are superior than others. Stratification is the unjust distribution of individuals beyond social categories that are distinguished by different access to resources. Healthcare is socially stratified because for instance members who are in higher social groups have a better health status, longer life expectancy, and lower mortality than those from groups with lower socioeconomic status. There are groups of people who have less and less resources than others and who are often in the lower categorization in our society. To an extent there are many individuals who believe that we all have the opportunity to have an equal chance at all the resources that are available but that is certainly not true.