Healthcare Is Health Care a Right or Privilege - Essay Example

IS HEALTH CARE A RIGHT OR A PRIVILEGE? Introduction This paper will analyze whether health care for the citizens of a country is a need or a luxury. Some may say it’s absolutely essential for any citizen while others may think otherwise. I, on the other hand, will study the pros of health care and the need for it to illustrate how extremely important it is. I think that it definitely is a right because after all, the citizens make up a country. Thus, health care should be a priority of the government for it to be a right of the people. Health is very important to every individual, but on a larger perspective if the people of a nation are not healthy then the nation has a problem which it may have to face today or after some years. Getting good healthcare is not possible for everyone as you need a background of money for that, but every individual has a right to an average rated healthcare. These people are not asking for the best, they just want somebody to help cure them and help them live a little longer. Discussion Now we come to the main part of this paper where we will discuss the pros and cons in detail and give examples to support it wherever possible. In America 20 per cent of the people are below the poverty level which means that they can not afford to pay for health insurance or for any other medical expenditure incurred by them. This level of poverty shows that one out of every six children goes to bed hungry. The government to solve this problem of health care can allocate a bigger portion of the budget for this service and especially help those people out who are in dire need of it. Another approach that can be used to provide proper heath care is to take it as a personal responsibility. If every individual himself starts living healthy by eating the right diet and causing less of self harm by smoking cigarettes and drinking less alcohol, it would make things much easier. It is not just the government or the doctors who are responsible for health it is every individual. (Christopher et. al, 2004) People who belong to different social strata hold differing opinions about health care. Health care is directly related to the amount of money a person has. The richer you are the more you are concerned about your health. While people who belong to the lower income groups are not really bothered and will not take precautionary steps to reduce the risk of getting sick. In America there are 45 million people who do not have health insurance. (Papadimos, 2007) Aristotle believed that anything that has a soul displays life. The body can grow, decay and provide itself with nutrition while the soul has powers of sensation, thinking and motivation. According to Aristotle, “If the whole body was one vast eye, sight would be it soul. As the eye is a tool for seeing with, but a living tool which is part of ourselves, so the body is like a tool or instrument for living with. Hence we may say of the soul that it is the end of the body, the activity to which the body is instrumental, as seeing the end to which the eye is instrumental.” (Papadimos, 2007) What Aristotle is trying to say is that for the soul to be nourished, health care needs to be provided to individuals so that they can grow to their fullest extent. According to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), man would eventually realize the things that are needed to preserve life. He gives us the law of nature which says, “A law of nature (lex naturalis) is a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.” (Papadimos, 2007) Basically he said that every human being has a right to anything he wants, even if it is another human’s body. He considers three aspects: seeking peace, laying down the right of nature and making covenants, and performance of covenants. By seeking peace he means that if an individual has a problem such as a hearing defect then seeking peace would mean correcting that problem by wearing a hearing aid. For a poor man this would not be possible as he would not be able to afford it. Another theory that we have on health care has been given by Thomas Paine (1737–1809). To him health care was about natural rights which are basically of two kinds: intellectual and comfort and happiness. Thus those in power within the country need to make sure that every individual has access to these rights. In today’s world, every individual has to give up something to achieve something. Thus they prioritize safety and security as more important and choose to go with these options rather than the option of healthcare. Most of the new medicines that are introduced in the market are patented. Thus any new life saving drug is so expensive because of these patents that any average income person can not afford to take these drugs. Although, the companies producing these drugs and the scientists who have worked on these drugs can be appreciated properly and they get the rightful rewards but the person who suffers at the end of the day is the man who needs the medicine but does not have enough money to purchase it. As Rachel Cohen of Doctors without Borders, a nonprofit emergency-relief organization, "Medicines are treated like a commodity, the same as Barbie dolls or computer software. Essential medicines should not be treated simply as products needing protection, or else poor people pay the price.” (Christopher et. al, 2004) Health care is not a commodity, even though it is being treated as one. Medical centers promote themselves and their superiority over other medical centers. Money is spent on this promotional activity, rather than being competitive and wasting resources they could use the same money for something better. They can help the poor and not charge the same prices as everyone else. Another issue is that even people who have health care insurance are confused. There are so many policies and exceptions to the insurance policy that the individual at the end of the day does not know what types of treatments are insured or not. People do not take preventive steps, with an aging population, it is better to be on the guard and be ready for any disease that might come up rather than wait for it to incur and then start looking for a cure. Conclusion In the end I would like to say again that health care is a right and not a privilege. It should not matter how much money you have when you need to get proper health care. Also, the government alone can not help in correcting this problem. The people themselves and the private companies such as the insurance companies and the medical centers need to take a proactive step in this whole process. The collaboration of all these would enable something good to be done on a wider scale, rather than just one state or only to a few people. It would help to take preventive measures rather than later try and find a solution or cure to it. As Hannah Arendt insightfully reminded us: "The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to a certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. The fact that man is capable of action means the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable" (Papadimos, 2007) Bibliography 1. Christopher W. Bryan-Brow and Kathleen Dracup (2004) The Pursuit of Healthcare, American Journal of Critical Care. 13: 368-370 2. Dean J. Kereiakes, James T. Willerson, (2004) US Health Care: Entitlement or Privilege? American Heart Association. 109:1460-1462 3. Erich H. Loewy, (1989) Textbook of Medical Ethics, Springer 4. Thomas J Papadimos (2007) Healthcare access as a right, not a privilege: a construct of Western thought, Philosophies, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine. 2: 2. 5. R S Lawrence (1994) The physicians perception of health care, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 87(Suppl 22): 11–14. Read More