Health Care
Name: Anila khan
Institution: Nikolas Larrow-Roberts
Date: June 12, 2013

Introduction

In most countries of the world healthcare is a right to every resident of that country. Governments in these countries and private sector provide healthcare to its residents as part of social safety nets. On average developing countries spend 1% to 2% of their GDP on safety nets. Social safety nets are non-contribution transfer programs for preventing the poor from falling below a given poverty level. As healthcare is aright accorded to all residents of the country, ethical issues are common in healthcare (Thobaben, 2010). Every decision made has ethical implications either to patients, health providers, healthcare leaders or both. Healthcare professionals, patients, families, relatives and friends face difficulties in making decisions on medical treatments that involve religious beliefs, moral principles or professional guidelines. In such a situation, healthcare ethics give guideline on how to make morally good decisions based on values and beliefs about life, suffering, health and death. My thesis statement is healthcare is a right to every resident of the country. Access to healthcare depends on the principle of justice (equitable distribution of resources and fairness). Justice in healthcare includes allocation which is the process for determining which resources would be distributed for healthcare for individuals and within populations. There are three levels of healthcare allocation. Social level dealing with money for healthcare, decision level on how, where, the money would be spent and last level of allocation concerns individual patients.

Healthcare Insurance and Uninsured Ethical issue and ethical problems healthcare presents in the United States of America is that only those with private health insurance, seniors who are aged over 65 years with Medicare, and low income earners with Medicaid have access to healthcare. Those with no medical insurance find it difficult to have access to healthcare. They end up not seeking treatment for ailments at the early stages when they are treatable resulting to admission into wards when they become too sick making treatment expensive for them. Some end up dying from preventable diseases. In the year 2002, 44 million Americans had no medical insurance cover because of poverty. More than 30% of Americans at or below poverty level did not have medical insurance coverage (parker, 2013). This means that poor people in the United States of America find it difficult to have access to healthcare because they are not insured and only those with health insurance coverage can have access to healthcare. Race in America has influence over healthcare insurance. People from some races are discriminated when giving healthcare insurance coverage. In 2002 32% Hispanic and 20% black Americans had no health insurance meaning they could not have access to healthcare and their lives were threatened with chronic ailments and even earlier deaths. In the United States of America healthcare system, if one is not insured it is difficult to obtain healthcare services. Those not insured cannot have regular source of healthcare, they do without much needed healthcare and they get less treatment for chronic ailments. Delays in treating patients because of not having medical cover leads to death. In the United States deaths of women with breast cancer but with no medical insurance is 30-50% higher than those with breast cancer but insured. This is so because those insured have access to healthcare and can get best medication for breast cancer including chemotherapy which uninsured women cannot get resulting to their deaths. When the uninsured end up in emergency rooms and hospitals in the United States because of sicknesses, they receive care but of low quality giving poor results to the patient than those with health insurance coverage (Peter, 2012).