Universal Healthcare

Anna Molina

Instructor Name

English

2 January 2020

Universal Healthcare

In 2015, Archeologists managed to uncover ancient scrolls that date back to almost three millennia. In these scrolls, there are certain evidences that a city in Egypt called Deir-el-Medina housed a program that offered paid leaves to workers with the added benefit from home visits from their workplace doctor CITATION Swa19 \l 1033 (Swan). This aforementioned example was proof that there was an existence of a Universal Healthcare in Egypt, at least to a small extent. Fast-forwarding history and we arrive at the movement when Otto Von Bismarck succeeded in uniting Germany under a single banner. After he achieves territorial supremacy in the region, he passed the Sickness Insurance Act of 1883, forcing the industrial complexes in his nascent state to offer insurance to their employees through jointed paid provident funds. This, as well as numerous other examples, proves that the concept of universal health care has existed in one form or another.

The basic aim of universal health care is to provide health coverage to every citizen of the community without causing financial damages to people that find difficulty in affording such services. In addition to that, another aim for this service is to honor this as a basic right of every person globally. The question is that why do we need universal health care? One of the basic and rather logical reason in this argument is that this practice can decrease the threshold of affordability, which can help us to create a healthy community CITATION Che13 \l 1033 (Chetty). This society then makes a large working force available, which in turn helps the economy of the state and paying tenfold the amount that has been invested in the venture in the first place.

Another reason that makes the need for universal healthcare eminent is the use of the pre-pooled funds for the reduction of financial barriers as well CITATION Jud18 \l 1033 (Judith J. Baker). This helps the state to spread the benefit of a stable and healthy economy to all the citizens of the community. Also, these prepayments increase the ability of citizens to afford medical treatment on their own. Therefore, the threshold of affordability is increased, which indirectly lessens the strain on the state-owned universal health care program and ends up helping both the state and the individual.

With the rise of populism, many people are beginning to wonder why the whole world is responsible for the care of everyone and not just their countrymen, or even their own immediate families CITATION Abb16 \l 1033 (Abbasi). Many nations indeed have certain cultural or religious taboos that are placed so that when discussing certain diseases is considered a crime. Take the example of AIDS. If we discuss this disease in certain backward societies like India, the well-placed societal taboos can even turn the person discussing his matter into an outcast.

But that does not mean that these nations do not deserve the benefits of universal healthcare. We living in the era of Globalization CITATION VRW17 \l 1033 (Wood). What happens to one nation or region is bound to affect the others in numerous ways. If the rate of healthy people drops in a region, civil unrest is sure to occur. This has happened a lot in many points of human history, be it Nazi Germany or the outbreak of certain viral diseases in Africa in the last decade.

In short, we can conclude that universal health care is a matter of responsibility as well as the inherent right on every human on the planet. No one is the follower of a lesser God here, therefore this right should be recognized. Also, universal healthcare can help us bridge the gaps that we have with other races and ethnicities so that we can create a healthy and stable future on everyone on this lovely planet of ours.

Works Cited

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbasi, Kamran. "From populism to population healthcare." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 109.12 (2016): 435.

Chetty, Lee-Roy. "The importance of universal healthcare." Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technologies (2013).

Judith J. Baker, R. W. Baker, Neil R. Dworkin. Health Care Finance. Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2018.

Swan, Esan. "Universal health coverage: an illustrated history." Financial Times 22 September 2019. Article. <https://www.ft.com/content/34084366-dadb-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17>.

Wood, VR. "Globalization, sustainability and marketing of healthcare in emerging markets: Doing good while doing well." Marinov, Marin A. Research Handbook of Marketing in Emerging Economies. Elgaronline, 2017. 30-55.