Healthcare is a right and as such access to care is also right, so why are more people dying sooner? 

I need a positive argument  based in this discussion question. Respond to this argument in one or more of the following ways:

Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information, evidence or research.

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Main Post

While the US spends more money per capita on health care than other country with little to no change in life expectancy, the rising cost continues to be directly related to the medical treatment of disease rather than prevention.  For many chronic disease processes, acute care is synonymous to a band aid on a decubitus ulcer.  This analogy can also be applied to the governments’ current approach to the delivery of healthcare.

An enormous opportunity for economic reform exists in healthcare from the Federal, State, and Local levels of government to the individual healthcare provider.  We can effect change not just by prevention, but also by considering new and dynamic methods to improve what is clearly a privileged system that caters mostly to the “haves” not the “have not’s”.  The poorer, less educated, and disabled (usually pre-existing) without resources are likely to be repeatedly hospitalized, without insurance and with costs defrayed to the private insurance sector causing private pay to be more expensive and limited in scope.  In the United States, insurance is a privilege, but access to healthcare is a right.

Logic indicates follow-up care and access to long-term treatment will lessen the need for hospitalization and improve patient health and quality of life.  It stands to reason the primary care takers of the chronically and terminally ill also experience a negative impact on their physical well-being and are silently hidden cost secondary to lack of appropriate resources and a disease centered model of healthcare.

The Population Health Model (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), (2013) suggests one might be able to extrapolate a similar model when considering how our government and the resulting bipartisanship limits, if not completely paralyses, the effective provision and advancement of health care to our Nation’s citizens.

In summary, it isn’t only the health-related behaviors of individuals; it is the inaccessibility to resources that limits effective change because of the political agendas and the subsequent inertia.  The resulting bureaucracy continues to facilitate the rising cost of healthcare while simultaneously precipitating the decrease in the American life-expectancy.  As practitioners, are we simply willing to accept the fact that our government is spending more money to live less years? Healthcare is a right and as such access to care is also right, so why are more people dying sooner?  The current provision of healthcare is seriously flawed. If our Nation continues to remain stagnant (bipartisan) rather than humanitarian on these issues we will continue to experience a rise in health care that is directly proportional to an unhealthier population and decreased life expectancy.  The ineffective and unequal provision of health care in this country remains a conundrum for which we seem incapable of finding a solution.

 

References:

World Health Organization. (1948). Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/about/definition/en/print.html

Knickman, J.R, & Kovner, A.R. (Eds). (2015). Health care delivery in the United States (4th ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing.

Healthcare.gov Plans – 2018 Trump Care Health Plans. Quote. First Quote Health. Com/? Campain_source.

American Nurses Association.  Health System Reform.  Retrieved March 22, 2012, from NURS://www.nursingworld.org/Main/Menu?Catagories/Policy-Advocacy/Health System Reform.