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¶ … access to quality healthcare in the contemporary United States is a tremendous social, moral, and ethical problem. Despite being one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the history of human civilization, the U.S. is currently a country in which basic healthcare is unavailable to almost half of the population (Kennedy, 2006; Parks & Wike, 2010). As many as 40,000 Americans die prematurely every year from diseases and conditions that are readily treatable with access to modern healthcare. Virtually every major ethical perspective supports the proposition that healthcare access should not be determined by the same for-profit marketplace principles as those that govern other industries (Kennedy, 2006; Parks & Wike, 2010; Reid, 2009).
In principle, utilitarianism supports this proposition because wide and equal access to healthcare is beneficial to the entire human community. Consequentialism supports this proposition because lack of access to healthcare results in a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering and loss of human life. Virtue ethics and care ethics also support this proposition because the fundamental purpose of providing access to healthcare is to benefit and reduce suffering in the human community and uphold the most basic values of the medical discipline.
One of the most important and necessary changes in American society is the recognition that access to healthcare is an ethical right of all individuals that cannot appropriately or ethically be denied in the pursuit of profits by private corporations such as those that currently control the health insurance industry (Kennedy, 2006; Parks & Wike, 2010). That is particularly true to the extent that control is effectuated through the influence of industry lobbyists who corrupt the political system to support their industry profits at the direct expense of human health and welfare. Ultimately, the U.S. must develop a much more equitable, ethical, and fair way to distribute healthcare.
References
Kennedy, E. (2006). America: Back on Track. Viking: New York.
Parks, J.A. And Wike, V.S. (2010). Bioethics in a Changing World. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
Reid, T. (2009). The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. New York: Penguin Group.
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