Health Care Provision Problems - Essay Example

"Health Care Provision Problems" is a magnificent example of a paper on the health system.
Health care access is the ability to obtain standard and satisfactory medical treatment for any health requirement. Health provision in different countries, grouping, and persons heavily influenced by economic and social conditions and the health policy in use varies. They have different strategies and policies on individual and population-based health care objectives within their community/society. Most rich countries give universal health care. Accessing health care is not easy owing to the costs required and the different political, economic, cultural, and social environment.

            There is no comprehensive solution to access health care, but there are various systems and issues that are emerging. Today many people cannot access health care because of the social, cultural, and economic factors or the health care system. In an attempt to deliver the most care for the greatest possible number of people at a cheaper cost, the health care systems may unintentionally make health care access difficult for individual people (Lurie, 55).

These challenges may be as a result of well-intentioned efforts to enable the patients’ access to health care or a desire to provide care for an individual at a cheaper cost, and putting into consideration a situation that may work best for most individuals. For example, formularies are lists of prescription medicines that are covered under an insurance plan to make it available to the patients on the plan at a cheaper cost. The unlisted medicines in the plan are usually available but are more expensive to the patient when they need to purchase these drugs. Both private and public health care systems use these formularies effectively creating a barrier for those who cannot afford it.

The insurers also become a barrier to patients’ access to health care when they shift part of the cost of care to the patients, using Insurance co-pays and coinsurance. The fixed amount that the patients pay each time they visit a doctor or get a prescription from the pharmacy is known as Co-pays while the percentage of the fee accepted under the insurance plan is known as coinsurance. These are tools that many health care plans employ in order to put off patients from seeking ‘needless’ medical care. Reducing unnecessary health care costs is vital, but for patients with limited earnings, or suffering from chronic conditions, coinsurance and co-pays can become a barrier as it increases out-of-pocket expenditure.

Economic factors may hamper patients’ capacity to access the best treatments. Financial barriers in most cases hinder low-income earners from getting timely medical care. This is because they cannot afford to see their doctor as frequently as they should do, therefore, receive little preventive care counseling and their doctor-patient connection become weak. In such situations, doctors find it difficult to prescribe the best treatment available as they do not understand the patients’ medical histories (Raffel, 181).

Language barriers and illiteracy can also limit patients’ access to proper health care; these in most cases affect the immigrant populations. When patients and their doctors do not speak a common language, misunderstandings are likely to occur. Even when patients and doctors speak a common language lacking fluency misunderstandings can occur because many people do not comprehend basic medical terms, medical information, or health ideas. This may end up delaying or seriously impairing their health care product and services access (Dreachslin, 52).

Other social factors may pose more complex challenges in the health care provision, for instance, the ethnic and racial inequality in health product and quality of health care has been witnessed among patients with identical health insurance, within the similar scheme of health care and in the same health plan.