Inequality in Health Care:
In the history of HealthCare, there have been so many unfortunate inequalities and these unequal treatments
have taken many lives at an unexpected time. Poverty plays a vital role in medical care. Poor people who are not able to afford to pay for medical insurance
or co-pay end up their lives with an untreatable or fatal illness and thus
subtracting their life span and living a life in misery. Gender plays equally
for unfair or unequal medical treatment. Researches have shown that many
pharmaceuticals have done medicine research on men. For example, Heart disease
and treatment have been studied on men. There are racial-ethnic disparities in The US that a black non-Hispanic child has 3 times chances of dying than white counterparts and 20 years old has a better chance of getting better care
than 60 years old. It is hard to say if it’s unjust as the young become old
someday while the old today was young once.
Health insurance and
coverage are the main reasons for people to get better treatment and vice versa.
Private insurance from the employer a patient gets better treatment and medicine
coverage and more options for Doctors while a poor with Government insurance
has a lower chance of being treated for their health problems and fewer options
for treatment. They have fewer doctor’s visits due to higher co-pays and not
being able to afford to pay the out of pocket, they end up being undiagnosed
for the lingering health and end up with serious health problems like stroke
and breast/ovarian cancer for women.
Populations like new
refugees with language difficulty have greater chances of misunderstanding
about the treatment and care because of not being able to communicate them
issues in their own words and afraid of bring everything at once. A person who
needs interpreter literally needs at least twice as much time as someone who
speaks English as their first language due to the use of interpreter but
unfortunately, most times they are given the same time period for the visit which
is overwhelming and are not able to communicate effectively. They cannot visit
doctors very often because they have to work for themselves and the family. The
symptoms they are describing might be caused by a single health problem but
they are not able to communicate all their symptoms because the provider may
deny that he or she can address only one issue at one visit. This leads to
improper treatment because the provider did not have enough time to listen to
the patient.
There are many men based
researches in Pharmaceutical companies. Drug for heart disease is based on the
research done for men. Due to the anatomy differences, it might not be the
exact treatment for women. Doses and side effects can vary or it can be more
harmful than useful. Researches have
shown African American women and uneducated women are more likely to be offered
for the formula for their baby at the childbirth than educated and or white women. The gap between poor and rich is growing every day based on 50 years of health data
study on health care. In the 1960s, before
Medicaid and Medicare, the wealthy got twice as much care as the poor would get. 1977,
poor got 14% more care comparing the rich counterparts while it makes sense
that poor people were sicker. Yet pattern changed in 2004, over the next eight
years, the wealthiest fifth of Americans, grew by 19.7 percent, care for the
poorest fifth fell. By 2012, the wealthy got 40 percent more doctor visits than the
Americans. Averaging the age and health, they got 43@ more care than poor.
Rising deductibles by the employer are the main problems for the poor to afford their care. The income of the poor and middle class cannot pay unplanned $400 and
end up not seeking care on time.
Medical bills have been
collection agencies biggest businesses. Women waiting for their breast lumps to
go away on its own and men with strokes without high blood pressure being
treated. Growing inequality in health care resulting in worsening outcomes for
poor Americans. The health gap between rich and poor Canadians have been closing
but Americans have been widening. Wealthiest American man today live 15 years
more than an average poor American
Gender: Women needing to
pay a higher premium than men. Contraceptives mandate differences in gender
between coverage of the medicines for one over the other. More women are
insured than men. Women 86% while men only 74%
Working to fix the issue
from the top down is crucial to bring this disparity down or resolving the
burning issue of inequality in HealthCare. Hiring culturally, linguistically
appropriate providers or including diversity on the top down will alleviate
some of the health inequalities and thus provide better health solutions for
the minor sufferer. Adopting Obama care Patient’s Protection and Affordable
Care Act, outlaws gender discrimination in health care settings.
References:
Woolhandler,
S., & Himmelstein, D. (2016, August 05). Health Care Inequality On The
Rise. Retrieved August 13, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steffie-woolhandler/health-care-inequality-on_b_11351350.html
B. (2016, May
26). Gender Inequality in Health Care - Boundless Open Textbook. Retrieved
August 13, 2017, from https://www.boundless.com/sociology/textbooks/boundless-sociology-textbook/gender-stratification-and-inequality-11/women-in-the-workplace-89/gender-inequality-in-health-care-515-10214/
Arcaya,
Mariana C., et al. “Inequalities in health: definitions, concepts, and
theories.” Global Health Action, Co-Action Publishing, 2015,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4481045/. Accessed 27 Aug. 2017.
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