Alexis Lee
Prof. Burr
Soc. 109
Essay #2 – Obama Healthcare In regards to the article, about Presidents Obama’s healthcare act, structural functionalism plays a role that supports all the individuals and groups that in part are affected by the situation. For example, healthcare is now accessible to many now including the lower class when prior weren’t able to take advantage of this. The ability for doctors now to receive financial benefits with fewer patients needing assistance results in saving costs. Health is important for this task because if members of society are unhealthy or ill, they will not be able to function adequately. If you are sick you are unable to be productive and when many members of society are ill, society is thrown out of balance because tasks are not being completed. Having a healthy society is critical to achieving sustainable and would be important in a functionalist society. In addition, conflict theory strikes another point. In the United States, one would think that healthcare is not a scarce resource due to the number of doctors, hospitals, medical schools, and the vast amount of medical technology that we have, but it is not a shortage of medical staff or technology, but the problems exists in the realm of access to these vital resources. If you do not have health insurance or your health insurance does not cover enough of your required medical expenses, you are forced to come up with the money yourself or go without. The wealthy or in Marxian terms the capitalists have the means to access the healthcare services that they need because they are the ones who make the decisions about how healthcare resources will be distributed. However, persons in the middle, working, and lower classes or the proletariat, often struggle to meet their most basic healthcare needs. A serious illness can easily cause a hardworking family to go completely bankrupt. Bearing that in mind, it could be argued that since the ruling class needs hard workers to accomplish their tasks so that the ruling class can become richer, having healthy workers would be beneficial because if a worker is unhealthy they will not be as productive and will be able to produce as many goods and services as a healthier worker. Lastly, symbolic interactionism, has a concept by Calvin