The Right to Healthcare Identified as One of the Most Debated Arguments

The healthcare system is going through many challenges that consist of the growing old population, rising costs, accessibility, quality of care, and the list goes on and on. This paper helps the readers apprehend the definitions, similarities, and variations between social justice and market justice. It also illustrates health services rationing in each machine and its operational model on different levels. The paper concludes by answering the question of how do these principles play at different levels and have an effect on the viability of proposed options to reform the healthcare system in the US.

The main causes of rising healthcare charges in the US consist of sub-optimal healthcare services delivery, complicated and varied payment models, lack of cost-lowering financial incentives, inflexible regulatory landscape, and an uninformed consumer lead to suppliers manipulated healthcare market. Furthermore, healthcare financing in the US is controlled by different players with varying compensation models; some financing sources are public sector-based, whilst others are private-sector based. And due to the fact that many independently-operated entities manage and operate the healthcare market, altering the status quo turns into a difficult balancing act. These issues have an effect on the cost, efficiency, accessibility, and distribution of healthcare services among the population.

All these circumstances carry a query of how to distribute constrained healthcare services that is fair for all citizens. What would be fair in distributing healthcare services? Using the social justice concept, market justice concept, or some kind of balance between both. Every person has the right to have access to essential healthcare services without distinction of gender, race, belief, or income. Providing high quality, more accessible, and less expensive healthcare services should be the primary purpose of the US healthcare system. The current healthcare system has gone some way to reaching this aim (Maruthappu, Ologunde, & Gunarajasingam, 2012).

Market justice ideas are driven by the cornerstones of capitalism, individualism, and self-interest (Budetti, 2008). Social justice principles are driven from ideas of societal duties and concern for the public well-being (Budetti, 2008). Market justice sees healthcare services as a commercial service delivered in the free-market, the place individuals buy a share of health services. On the other hand, the concept of social justice observes healthcare as a social resource. It acknowledges that monetary factors play a function in each person’s health status. In social justice, each and every single individual is entitled to have at least the primary healthcare benefits.

The ideas of social justice require deeper, if not full, manage from the authorities in the healthcare offerings market. Also, in social justice, the government is the sole vehicle for making sure that there is a fair and equitable healthcare market (Budetti, 2008). Universal insurance and access to care are paramount to social justice, whether they are attained through a single source of healthcare financing, whether public, private or a combination of the two (Budetti, 2008).

While equity and fair treatment are cornerstones in social and market justice, the principals and methods by which each one delivers them are different. Social justice centers around making sure that the poor and rich are handled equally. While market justice centers around making sure that every person buying healthcare services has an equal right to succeed. The freedom to choose and act, however, is shared by both social and market justice but is seen in a different light. Social justice focuses on the freedom of individuals to pick what suits them, whilst market justice focuses on the freedom of individuals to take part in the exchange of healthcare services.

The United States implements a complementary system of healthcare financing that employs market justice and social justice principles together. For well-to-do and middle-income citizens, the self-pay or employer-sponsored private insurance plans are driven with the aid of market justice. Lower-income, elderly, or disadvantaged populations come to be counted on insurance plans under federal or state government-sponsored insurance plans, which are driven by social justice. While the two principles are complementary, the uninsured populace still exists because the uninsured are both priced out of the private insurance plans or fall out of the eligibility standards for publicly funded health insurance programs.

The US realized that relying on market justice standards alone to organize healthcare sources is no longer entirely feasible, whilst also not tilting entirely closer to social justice principles to attain full equity. The introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in the Sixties commenced titling the market towards social justice. The trend toward social justice endured from then until recently, when Congress brought the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The adoption of social justice, however, has not been fully realized where coverage expands to cover the entire population as it is nevertheless targeted on individuals or families (Budetti, 2008). As a result, healthcare insurance becomes incomplete, and the vogue of lowering insurance coverage options is now affecting employer-supported healthcare plans (Budetti, 2008).

Rationing healthcare is integral when applying widespread coverage as is decided by the World Health Organization (2013). Governments and healthcare governance bodies have been implementing rationing strategies such as priority setting for a lengthy time (Etzioni, 1991). Governments, rather than markets, controlled the supply of healthcare services and how to distribute them to the population. Various organizations have set rationing strategies at different layers of the healthcare system.

Governments and insurance providers controlled total spending on healthcare (Gostin & Powers, 2017), the quality ranges and type of services provided, the development of healthcare-related technology, and the distribution of healthcare facilities to the population. Hospitals and different healthcare facilities, in turn, managed the supply of providers and their schedules, consumer’s access to care. Physicians, and different clinicians, managed treatment options primarily based on patient-specific criteria such as conditions and treatment methods. The process of healthcare rationalization is haphazard. It is neither a rational nor satisfactory way to lower the fee of healthcare (Gostin & Powers, 2017). The social justice idea acknowledges that it is challenging for each country to manage to pay for unlimited healthcare services for its whole population.

Reforming the US health system is expected to achieve broader insurance coverage and reduce the rising costs. The argument for universal access to health care coverage is shared between social and market justice principles. However, each idea agreed on the currently existing legal guarantee of access to emergency care. This is widely shared in the US moral stance by way of democrats and republicans.

Fifty million uninsured populations have gained insurance under the ACA (Maruthappu, Ologunde, & Gunarajasingam, 2012). Despite this valuable gain, the ACA could not provide broad coverage to the entire population. In fact, the right-leaning Heritage Foundation delivered the idea of the ACA’s mandate seeking to maintain the free market in healthcare (Roy, 2013). The designers of the ACA didn’t intend to guarantee universal access for everyone.

Many developed countries provide universal access to quite a number of healthcare services to their citizens. However, in the US, the American way of life is different. Individualism, self-reliance, and capitalism are the tenants of the American culture, which has struggled via the years to create free-market economics aligned with social justice. The US government needs to steps up and overhaul delivery machine and compensation coverage changes all over the US (Medicine, Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, & Committee on Assuring the Health of the Public in the 21st Century, 2003).

These changes include public programs expansion for Medicare and Medicaid, alternative financing models such as capitation and bundled payments, improved care coordination through accountable care organizations, shared financial savings and medical homes, and outcome-focused policies such as the application of standardized value-based care (Medicine, Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, & Committee on Assuring the Health of the Public in the 21st Century, 2003). Americans’ long-standing distrust of the authorities does not make these solutions easily adaptable. The US health system will need some form of stability between social justice and market justice to fulfill the demand and diversity of American culture.

The right to healthcare identified as one of the most debated arguments that the United States has to address every year. A human right to healthcare is now not simple with the complexities of funding, logistics, ethics, and rationality (Maruthappu, Ologunde, & Gunarajasingam, 2012). Add to that, the American culture and how Americans are tending to emphasize capitalism and individualism and mistrust of the government. The US mixture of public and private insurance plans was wonderful in increasing insurance coverage amongst the population, yet it in no way came close to attaining accepted coverage. The current healthcare system is trying to repair and reform the health system.

However, the government cannot work alone to improve populace health. It requires buy-in from all sectors of society. Persevering to make sure the availability of services for the patient no matter the financial or other fees to society is still viewed as a noble cause. As a healthcare provider, I have an ethical duty to place patients’ welfare above my self-interest and above the requirements of different groups and to advocate for patients’ well-being.