Healthcare: a Right or a Privilege
There is a question brought to the table that causes mass disagreement. It’s a simple “is healthcare a right or a privilege essay?” The answer to this question is not as easy as it sounds. There have been many debates throughout the years, but is there a simple answer to the question or is something that cannot be answered without a difference of opinions? Recently there’s also been another problem at hand, which is the rapidly escalating costs of health care.
When examining whether health care should be considered as a right of choice, I believe that health care should be a privilege. If it were to be considered a right then the question that comes up is, how much is enough? How much should taxpayers pay for those who cannot afford care? On the contrary, when considered a privilege, another question comes up to challenge our ethics, what about the patient’s family that works hard, but still cannot afford their child’s care? However, when it is considered a right, there are some exceptions that come into mind as well. Should a smoker receive a lung transplant or should a ninety-year-old get a heart transplant? If care in these two situations is denied, then the opinion is that, no not everyone deserves the same care, which makes health care a privilege. With all this being considered, there is also another factor to consider, this is ethics. Yes “healthcare for all is in essence a moral right” but it isn’t a legal right, which is why the government should stay out of the concept of healthcare. When government gets involved to an already complicated state of affairs this can cause more of a conflict than solving the problem at hand. This is due to the fact that the business behind health care has many complicated process’ which can be disrupted due to governmental interference.
To continue healthcare is a privilege essay, healthcare costs are one of the largest expenditures in the United States alone. I believe that the government should stay out of the funding process altogether. An example of a government-funded acts was ‘Obamacare’ or the ‘Affordable Care Act.’ While this may have had positive outcomes such as increasing access to the public and decreasing the amount of uninsured, there was “nothing to control the underlying costs”. Therefore, the amount of uninsured in turn actually began to rise because with these rising costs insurance premiums also went up an “average of 26 percent increase in 2018”. As a result, the Affordable Care Act didn’t seem as affordable as it seemed to be and not some were able to afford the subsidies, which caused them to be unable to afford coverage under Obamacare. This gave rise to an increase in the rates of uninsured Americans. With this being said, I believe that it should be the private sector that should continue to manage the cost. Private sectors are able to compete because they have an incentive for profit which makes them efficient in controlling costs to be the most efficient. So, there would a monopolistic competition, because different hospitals would have product variation leading to control over prices. It would cause competition over the lowest prices, which can help decrease the overall cost of healthcare spending’s because the consumer wants the lowest prices. Competition can help benefit consumers by containing costs and improve quality.
In order to reduce rising healthcare costs, it is important to bring back managed care. Managed care is a “group of health care services to a group of enrolled members through efficient management of services needed by the members and negotiation of prices or payment arrangements with providers”. It is a system of health care delivery directly in contract with hospitals, there is no government involvement. This competition is considered an oligopoly since there are a small number of producers and sellers due to the contract with certain providers. Therefore, with managed care, you are able to control unnecessary utilization and limited fee for service. The reason why this is so efficient is that risk sharing is used, which promotes economically prudent delivery. However, this plan has not worked for one reason. This is because this measure requires numerous plans which is very complex and hard to deal with. Also, Americans want the choice to choose their doctors and not be limited to a certain physician, taking away their choice seems as though they are losing their freedom of choice. Another way to decrease the escalating costs of healthcare is something other countries have already realized. Health care spending is directed through utilization. In order to make profit hospitals and big businesses oftentimes go through unnecessary procedures that could have been averted. In addition to this the United States delivery system “delivers a more expensive mix of services”. With more technology to provide the services, there is more access and more access to expensive technology would result in an increase in cost. Therefore, in order to decrease the cost here, unnecessary procedures should be eliminated and there should be a focus on preventative care. The difficulty with this matter is that patients do not know what is going on and don’t and also there is a focus on care when there is a problem rather than trying to prevent it.
In conclusion is healthcare a basic human right argumentative essay, with all these considerations, in order to lower the average national expenditures for healthcare, I believe that monopolistic competition should continue to be used with some ideas of managed care incorporated. With this, the companies will continue to set a price ceiling in order to make a profit but also draw customers at a fair price that is desirable. With that, I believe that it would make us a step closer to decreasing the rising costs.
