Healthcare as a Right or Privilege and Environmental Impact on Practice
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Healthcare: A Right or Privilege?
Whether healthcare is a right or a privilege is a conversation that has been in various circles in society. Healthcare could get argued to be a privilege if it was a service structured to benefit only a portion of the people. However, healthcare is meant for all people as it is a basic necessity. Although people may not get ill all the time, healthcare is a primary factor in ensuring people have high-quality lifestyles. Healthcare is crucial in ensuring a progressive society through enhancing continuity of life. Healthcare is vital in the maintenance of a healthy community. Therefore, healthcare is more of a right as it is critical to life continuity and the establishment of healthy communities.
Right to healthcare is essential in the maintenance of a people’s lifeline. Health care has been listed by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a fundamental human right (Binkley, 2020). Concerning this, authorities should play a central role in ensuring an enabling environment for functional medical facilities and practitioners. The aspect should incorporate schemes that provide affordable health care plans to facilitate people's access to care. Such a plan is the US's Affordable Care Act, which has enabled a majority of its population to access healthcare easily by providing fair plans. Implementing healthcare as a universal plan is crucial in eliminating manipulation of healthcare services in a consumer good-like way. Therefore, healthcare as a right is critical as it enables people to seek medical care whenever ill at friendly costs. Resultantly, people can get their health restored, averting further risks and hence life continuity.
Healthcare as a human right is devoid of people’s backgrounds. The right overlooks culture, religious orientations, racial and ethnic groupings, and economic status (Gerisch, 2018). Healthcare as a right should be to the benefit of the public and should enable all community members to live dignified lives. Healthcare as a right should be distinguished from healthcare insurance which limits accessibility to health for every citizen (Gerisch, 2018). Limitations to healthcare inhibit people's fundamental way of life when attached to the health insurance system. Healthcare is central to uplifting people's living standards as a challenged healthcare system hinders the performance of other activities people may engage in to better their lives. Healthcare should be a right given that states in the US assure citizens of education, protection, fire, and police services as basic rights; hence health care should also be prioritized given that nothing may progress in its absence (Bauchner & Fontanarosa, 2020). Therefore, healthcare is a right and should adopt the manner in execution to enhance people’s lives by uplifting the status of healthiness in society.
Impact of Healthcare Environmental Change on Practice
Dynamics in healthcare provision continue to influence the mode of practice significantly. In recent times, healthcare has evolved in various ways. Such include the massive use of computerized systems and care personalization. Adopting these changes has helped improve care delivery, which has helped meet healthcare expectations as a right. In my opinion, the automation of healthcare systems, particularly in health records, has influenced my style of offering care, whereby currently, attending to patients is faster. Retrieving past patient records is now easier, which helps in saving time as, at a glance, one is able to learn about a patient's illness history and develop appropriate care plans. Through automation, it is still possible to virtually attend to a patient and make a follow-up, improving care delivery.
Care personalization makes another trend in healthcare that I perceive to impact practice positively. The adjustment is essential in helping learn more about a patient. It helps a care practitioner know more about the patient's conditions, care preferences, and cultural norms. Consequently, patients can now receive customized care through patient-nurse engagements. Also, that has helped foster relationships between nurses, patients, and their families. Therefore, I find changes in the healthcare environment essential in raising care standards for patients and influencing practice positively enhancing patient-centered care.
References
Bauchner, H., & Fontanarosa, P. (2020). Health Care Is a Right and Not a Privilege. JAMA, 323(11), 1049. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.0891
Binkley, C. (2020). A Right or a Privilege? How to Practically and Ethically Reconcile Two Opposing Views of Health Care. Scu.edu. Retrieved 28 July 2022, from https://www.scu.edu/ethics-spotlight/post-election-reconciliation/a-right-or-a-privilege-how-to-practically-and-ethically-reconcile-two-opposing-views-of-health-care/#:~:text=Article%2025%20of%20the%20United,as%20a%20basic%20human%20right.
Gerisch, M. (2018). Health Care As a Human Right. Americanbar.org. Retrieved 28 July 2022, from https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/health-care-as-a-human-right/.