The Pros And Cons Of Commodity Of Healthcare

Healthcare: a Commodity or Economic Good? C.S. Lewis warned, "you can't get second things by putting them first; you can only get second things by putting first things first."1 This quote summarizes America's harrowing healthcare crisis. In a prosperous country known for its democracy and wealth, an estimated forty-eight million Americans are uninsured. Forty-five thousand Americans die each year because they are not adequately insured; the American Journal of Medicine estimates that 62 % of the American families declaring bankruptcy every year do so because of insurmountable medical bills.2 American healthcare is viewed as a privilege, granted if one works for the right employer or is rich enough to afford it. But healthcare is a right, …show more content…
A single payer system is synonymous to the inalienable right of healthcare because it is a system characterized by universal and comprehensive coverage, publicly financed though a central, governing agency. The American healthcare system, however, is made up of a highly fragmented system in which some citizens belong to private insurance plans through their workplace, others obtain insurance through publicly financed Medicare or Medicaid, and many remain uninsured. Currently, the United States’ dominant force of for-profit, private insurers creates a high cost demand through various “transaction costs,” defined as “the rising costs of administering and coordinating a system that is designed to reduce access.”3 Subsequently, private insurers do not want to sell to everyone but only to those unlikely to need care. Driven by the concept of market justice, private insurers provide companies with the incentive to screen subscribers and identify those unlikely to submit claims. Hence, they adopt the practices of “skimming,” accepting only patients who can pay and leaving the government responsible for covering the costs of the impecunious, and “dumping,” transferring emergency patients to government hospitals if they are unable to pay. These methods ultimately leave the publicly funded hospital responsible for paying all of the costs of the uninsured patient, and it places a heavier burden on taxpayers. The perverted system of for-profit, private healthcare insurance discourages the uninsured from primary and preventive care, driving them into more expensive care settings. Currently, “nearly half of the uninsured have no regular source of care, and a third did not fill a prescription in the past year because of cost.”3 Limitations on obtaining