Help me Write Essay

Universal Healthcare

To prepare for this Assignment, review your proposed initiative from Week 3.

Universal Healthcare Assignment

Develop an 8- to 10-slide PowerPoint SWOT analysis presentation based on your proposed initiative from Week 3.

Your presentation should include the following:

  • An analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your proposed population health initiative
  • An analysis of the role of social and economic determinants in assessing your selected community’s needs
  • An assessment of the direct and indirect financial consequences for your proposed initiative

Universal Healthcare: Analyzing the Ethical and Legal Foundations of the Policy

Name of student

Institutional Affiliation

Date of submission

Also read: Healthcare Quality and Improvement

Universal Healthcare: Analyzing the Ethical and Legal Foundations of the Policy

Introduction

According to the World Health Organization report, good health is a fundamental right to all the people for ensuring that there is a sustained socio-economic development as well as significant reduction in the global poverty levels (Carrin, 2007). It is therefore important to explore the ethical and legal foundations of this policy implementation and explicate the pros and cons of these perspectives in an effort to make universal access to healthcare services more reasoning and beneficial to all. These are discussed under the following distinct subheadings.

Part 1: Ethical Analysis of the Policy

Ensuring equal access to healthcare services by all the citizens is surrounded by serious ethical concerns. Based on the utilitarian ethical perspective, it is imperative to examine if the decision or taking the action to implement the policy will bring maximum goodness to the greatest proportion of the population. Already, there are issues of discrimination of the lower income segment of the society (Burns, Dooley, & Armstrong, 2014). The policy protagonists argue that the universal health coverage program will limit access of the uninsured and the underinsured who cannot afford to pay the universal healthcare coverage taxes imposed by the government. This implies that all the people will not have equal access to the healthcare services yet it is a legal requirement enshrined under the Bill of Rights as a fundamental human right.

Another important ethical concern resulting from the universal healthcare policy is the determination of how the policy helps to fulfill the duties, obligations, and responsibilities between the governments and the citizens. It is the duty of the government to ensure equal access to healthcare services by all its citizens without any form of alienation (Cox, 2010). This, therefore, brings the question of whether the taxes imposed by the government for universal healthcare coverage takes into consideration these issues. Under any circumstance nevertheless, it can be argued that universal healthcare is both good and bad based on an ethical analysis. It is good in the sense that it reduces the overall cost of healthcare and ensures all citizens access it. It is also bad in the sense that it does not bring equity in the access to healthcare services especially with reference to the uninsured and the underinsured.

Part 2: Legal Analysis of the Policy

One imperative legal issue associated with the introduction and implementation of the universal healthcare policy is the issue of privatization. It is evident that universal health care coverage is a multi-trillion dollar industry which draws the interest of many players from both the public and the private sectors. The privatization affects the costs of accessing healthcare to lower income individuals due to inflated costs of services (Tsimtsiou, 2017). This limits access to fundamental rights of the citizens such as accessing basic and high-quality healthcare products and services.

From a critical and in-depth perspective, this is quite costly to the normal citizens and the entire rollout of the program become compromised since it only benefits a selected class of the society which is against the law of providing equal access of healthcare services to all people. This is, however, good and bad from different perspectives. It is good in the sense that it expands the economy especially the healthcare industry through the revenues generated during privatization. It is bad in the sense that it ignores the legal obligations of the government in ensuring that all citizens get equal and desirable access to the healthcare services irrespective of one’s social class in the society.

Part 3: Recommendations

Based on the analysis above, it is evident that universal healthcare as a policy in the healthcare industry is affected by various ethical and legal considerations. It is therefore imperative to find suitable strategies that would make the program meaningful and useful to all. This can be achieved by involving stakeholder collaboration during policy review and decision-making. This includes stakeholders from both the public and private sectors (“5. Responsibility- Sensitive Universal Health Care,” n.d). It is also important for the government to look into the plight of the lower income class of individuals who cannot afford the insurance costs and find how they can be incorporated into the program. This will create a better platform for understanding and all-stakeholders involvement as desired.

References
  1. Responsibility- Sensitive Universal Health Care. (n.d.). Health, Luck, and Justice.

Burns, R., Dooley, B., & Armstrong, J. (2014). Towards Universal Health Care- A Review of the Basic Basket of Care Associated With Universal Health Care Delivery Models. Value in Health, 17(7), A417-A418.

Carrin, G. (2007). Designing health financing policy towards universal coverage.Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 85(09), 652-652.

Cox, T. (2010). Legal and Ethical Implications of Health Care Provider Insurance Risk Assumption. JONA’s Healthcare Law, Ethics, and Regulation, 12(4), 106-116.

Tsimtsiou, Z. (2017). Primary health care and universal health coverage: Achieving health for all. Health and Primary Care, 1(1).

According in Healthcare