Ethics Health Insurance Essay

Submitted By k9mire
Words: 1914
Pages: 8

Health insurance is the key that opens the door to many treatments and to a better healthier life. Unfortunately, many people in The United States do not have access to this key. In the United States today the fact is that there are more than 45 million people uninsured (Tr ried pg20). This, simply put, is unacceptable for the nation that spends the most on healthcare each year. The coverage offered is relatively poor to none in many of the areas that need it the most. With the lack of coverage comes the lack of healthiness and happiness. Shouldn’t we give people the coverage desired? But the main question to ask do people have the right to healthcare?
My main concern is that people are dying because they do not have any health care coverage or access to healthcare services. According to US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, approximately 18,314 people between ages 25-64 die annually because of the lack of health insurance. According to The Institute of Medicine (IOM), Working age Americans without health insurance receive healthcare too late when needed most, they tend to be sicker and die sooner. In similar situations such as car crashes, they receive poorer care than those who are covered by insurance. It is also shown that people wait until the last minute for treatment to avoid thousands of dollars of debts that would make living with treatment even harder than living until death. Usually, if people cannot afford it they will not go to annual checkups or follow up checkups and be at higher risk of disease, other chronic illnesses, and ultimately death. But does this give them the right to this coverage.
If people do not have the right to health care coverage than people can die of noncommunicable diseases that are easily cured. People die from these diseases every day and if they would have the right to health care insurance they would be treated and not die from a common disease every year. People would be able to get prescriptions that have antibiotics that can cure a common cold. If people do not have health care coverage they cannot simply get the flu shot for their toddlers. They will not be able to help their baby with an ear infection, which a child could go deaf from. If people had health care coverage these diseases would be cured.
In the Declaration of Independence it is said that all men are equal and are “…endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So as we said on an annual basis 18,314 die do to the lack of healthcare coverage. The problem with this is that this death is preventable. The study shows that if they have healthcare coverage they would not have died. So is it right to deny these people the right to healthcare if it would prevent them from their death? If we have the right to life then we should do everything possible to keep everyone alive including giving everyone healthcare.
Some objectives to the healthcare plan are the initial cost to it, the government controlled mandate, the unfairness of forcing someone to pay more to cover other people, increase of taxes, taxing the wealthier investors, the system is complicated, there is no universal coverage, and it doesn’t allow alternative healthcare, and the bill was passed before any of congress read the bill. These objections are here because they’ve been brought to attention by the people of America. The people of America are having trouble understanding why we need a different system of healthcare than the one we already have. Everyone that has insurance thinks we are fine the way we are, and that we do not need to fix what is not broken.
In the United States many people judge fairness by money; they believe everyone should pay the same amount of money for the same good or service. The problem with this is that not everyone can afford to pay the same amount of money; therefore many people are denied coverage because they cannot afford the