Tracy Foster, a Tennessee resident, cannot go to her annual check-ups to maintain her health, which took a new priority in her life because surviving cancer took a physical toll. Mike Adcox suffered an injury in 2013 that prevented him from working; now he lives in pain without the ability to receive care. A back injury and chronic arthritis prevents Phillip Willis from working, so he cannot afford the insurance to get back to work. The list of stories continues because of the failure of Bill Haslam, Tennessee’s governor, and the Tennessee state legislature to expand medicaid to the 280,000 people that fall into the legislative Medicaid gap. These people do not qualify for TennCare (Medicaid), do not make enough to buy subsidized plans on the
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Because people do not have health insurance, they lack preventive care, and they go to the emergency room more often than those with insurance, sometimes in instances that a clinic could otherwise cover. When uninsured (usually low-income, low-asset people) go to the emergency room, the federal government requires hospitals to stabilize the patient, but they do not cure the patient, resulting in more money spent on healthcare in sum than if they had insurance. These people usually come out of the surgery still sick and go bankrupt so that they vanquish their debts and the hospital pays for the stabilization. In Tennessee, a projected 54 hospitals will close because of this effect, leaving 34 counties without a hospital at all (TJC). This introduces another geographic inequality: in emergency situations, some people have to travel two counties to find a hospital.
Carroll 4
Healthcare inequality, an epidemic in the United States, takes root in legislative failure, free market capitalism, and “black helicopter” conservative government mentality. The United States, an exception to the remainder of the developed world, does not have universal healthcare and generates healthcare inequality through treating healthcare as a commodity. These inequalities stem from the idea that low-income individuals deserve to be low-income and that
Because people do not have health insurance, they lack preventive care, and they go to the emergency room more often than those with insurance, sometimes in instances that a clinic could otherwise cover. When uninsured (usually low-income, low-asset people) go to the emergency room, the federal government requires hospitals to stabilize the patient, but they do not cure the patient, resulting in more money spent on healthcare in sum than if they had insurance. These people usually come out of the surgery still sick and go bankrupt so that they vanquish their debts and the hospital pays for the stabilization. In Tennessee, a projected 54 hospitals will close because of this effect, leaving 34 counties without a hospital at all (TJC). This introduces another geographic inequality: in emergency situations, some people have to travel two counties to find a hospital.
Carroll 4
Healthcare inequality, an epidemic in the United States, takes root in legislative failure, free market capitalism, and “black helicopter” conservative government mentality. The United States, an exception to the remainder of the developed world, does not have universal healthcare and generates healthcare inequality through treating healthcare as a commodity. These inequalities stem from the idea that low-income individuals deserve to be low-income and that