Disparities In Health Care Essay

It can be quite prevailing for individuals to have financial problems towards health coverage. Based on the Health Affairs reference, “In the last decade, health insurance premiums costs have increased by 80%... whereas 58% of Americans report they are not able to seek medical attention due to high costs” (Gary Claxton, Matthew Rae, and Nirmita Panchal, et al). Statistics also present many factors exhibiting millions of individuals facing the risk of losing their insurance. Above all, health insurance is a basic health necessity. Medical services being available to everyone will benefit the public health not only with quality, but along with quantity.

The author was trying to show how the difference between two cultures can influence in health care. The author showed how the difference between illness and disease also affects the forms of treatment. It is important to recognize the patient’s cultural beliefs because this may help us to recognize how effective the given treatment can be and in what ways we can enhance the treatment without sacrificing the patient’s cultural beliefs. The author also showed how both the parents and the doctors care about Lia but what they thought was best for Lia varied. The doctors thought that the parents were harming the treatment by not being compliant and the parents thought that the doctors were hurting Lia by giving her so much medicine.

Health Care in the US is arguably available to all who seek it but not everybody has had the same experience and treatment when walking through the doors of a healthcare facility. In many cases, people are discriminated against due to their gender, race/ethnicity, age, and income and are often provided with minimal service. Differences between groups in health coverage, access to care, and quality of care is majorly affected through these disparities. Income is a major factor and can cause groups of people to experience higher burden of illness, injury, disability, or mortality relative to another group.

Background The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is officially referred to as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was enacted into law on March 23, 2010. It is estimated that prior to the enactment of the ACA, 44% or 81 million people between the ages 19-64 were either uninsured or underinsured in the United States (Schoen, Doty, Robertson, & Collins, 2011). The populations most likely to be uninsured or underinsured are individuals with earning between 133-200 % below the established federal poverty guidelines (Schoen et al., 2011). Consequently, 80% of individuals with earning under $20,000-$39,999 were uninsured or underinsured (Schoen et al., 2011).

The law that was intended to improve the status quo of health care has, in essence, caused a dangerous paradigm shift in health care costs. Fundamentally, the Affordable Care Act is a failed attempt to reduce health care costs in the United States. The Act was designed to increase affordability of health insurance for extremely low-income families; nevertheless, the Act exponentially increased health insurance costs for the majority of Americans. In America, majority rules-- why should health care be an

As previously described, the United States is the country that spends the most money in health care in the world. For example, just in the year 2008, it spent 16.2 percent of its gross domestic product on health- care (Gaydos 700). Through the population health model, investment and policy decisions in areas such as education, income transfer, civil rights, macroeconomics, employment, welfare, housing, and neighborhoods would have a significant effect on improving a population’s health than increasing the spending on medical services. (Jonas & Kovner 92). Through this model, there might not only be a decrease in what is spent by the country in health care services, but also an improvement in many other areas that would improve the economy of

46.8 million Americans were reported as uninsured in 2013, which equivocates to one sixth of the population. Those without insurance have revealed that they risk “more problems getting care, are diagnosed at later disease stages, and get less therapeutic care” (National Health Care Disparities Report) and those insured risk losing their insurance. Inadequately covered citizens are often working-class individuals who simply cannot receive insurance due to uncontrollable inconveniences and therefore jeopardize having medical coverage. In these instances, Americans have a chance of being diagnosed with diseases that they had no opportunity to prevent or could not diagnose them at an early stage of the illness. Patients have suffered unnecessarily due to lack of health care, and “18,000 Americans die every year because they don't have health insurance” (PNHP).

Healthcare disparities are a significant issue in the U.S. with factors such as quality of care, access to care, and insurance playing a role in discrepancies. Statistics have shown that healthcare disparities have improved but are still an issue in the United States. These disparities have been improving throughout history with efforts made by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The leading cause of the disparities is insurance coverage. The current intervention being used is the ACA, which was put into place by President Obama.

Universal Coverage Health Policy Proposal One of the most significant issues that continue to affect Americans is inadequate access to healthcare. Despite the US being one of the most developed countries with the largest economy, its citizens still face issues accessing quality healthcare services (Galvani et al., 2022). In spite of the recent passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), most minorities and other vulnerable populations face multiple barriers to accessing healthcare services (Keisler-Starkey & Bunch, 2020). Thus, these conditions call for the development of new policies and legislation that will reduce the increased inequalities witnessed in the healthcare sector and ensure every US citizen can access quality healthcare without

This essay aims to identify and evaluate the inequalities in health care in different areas of society, namely disability and gender. Firstly, it is important to understand what we mean by health inequalities. It is commonly understood that health inequality refers to unjust differences in the health status, usually preventable, between different groups, populations or individuals. The existence of such inequalities is attributed to the unequal distributions of social, environmental and economic conditions within societies. Such conditions determine the risk of individuals getting ill, their ability to prevent sickness, as well as opportunities to access to the right treatments.

A major healthcare concern is making medicine available to those who are impoverished and live in underserved areas. I grew up in Gloversville, New York, a medium sized town that was at one point considered the most impoverished city in the state. Growing up in this region has given me understanding of what life is like in underserved areas. I 've witnessed first hand, the difference in opportunity between myself and students coming from a more urbanized background. It is easy to empathize with those who do not receive proper treatment due to demographic disadvantages.

According to Baldwin (2003) health care disparities are the differences in health and health care between population groups including race, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. Disparities limits the improvements of quality health care which could result in unnecessary health care expenses. Factors that are contributing to disparities within today’s society are lack of access to quality health care and the number of individuals who are uninsured. As the population continue to grow and become more diverse health care disparities will continue to increase.

Introduction People hope and seeks long and healthier lives. Thus, health care is the act of taking preventative or necessary medical procedures to improve people well-being. Improvement or preventative may be done with surgery, the administering of medicine, or other alterations in a person 's lifestyle. These services are usually offered through a health care system made up of hospitals and physicians. Although, the health care system is set up to reduce or to prevent disease etc., there is a gap or disparity in the US health care system.

1. What does the term health disparities mean? Health disparities are preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations. Populations can be defined by factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, education, or income, disability, geographic location orientation.

Health inequalities are preventable and unjust differences in health status experienced by certain population groups. People in lower socio-economic groups are more likely to experience chronic ill-health and die earlier than those who are more advantaged. Health inequalities are not only apparent between people of different socio-economic groups – they exist between different genders and different ethnic groups (“Health inequalities,” n.d.). The situation in which people are born, grow, develop, work and age are affected by social, economic, environmental and most importantly political factors.