Universal Healthcare Pros and Cons

Discussion Board 5

Question 1: Discuss whether the presence of therapeutic misconceptions impacts the internal validity of a medical research study, that is, the extent to which no other variables other than the ones being studied contributed to the result.

Therapeutic misconception could, in basic terms, be conceptualized as patient belief that decisions made in relation to the study in which they participate in are meant to benefit them and are tailored to address their specific concerns, as opposed to the establishment of generalizable knowledge. To a large extent, the presence of therapeutic misconceptions could have a significant impact on medical research study internal validity. This is to say that therapeutic misconceptions could affect our confidence regarding the extent to which other factors are responsible for a medical research study’s cause-and-effect relationship. For instance, therapeutic misconception could result in a higher attrition rate or experimental mortality – which is in itself a threat to internal validity. In this case, patients could be unwilling to continue participating in experiments for various reasons, i.e. following the realization that that their individual therapeutic interests are not necessarily being advanced by the research protocol. It is also important to note that therapeutic misconceptions could have a significant effect on participant attitudes about the study. Indeed, in the words of Laake, Benestad, and Olsen (2007), “how subjects view a study and participate in it can also threaten interval validity” (192). Attitudes and/or expectations could, for instance, trigger a placebo effect and undermine the study conclusions’ integrity with regard to variable relationships.

Question 2: Describe one advantage and one disadvantage of universal health care systems as implemented, for example, in the United Kingdom and Canada. You may use outside resources to support your position.

In the past, various countries have embraced universal healthcare systems. Some of the said countries are inclusive of, but they are not limited to, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Norway, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada, etc. Universal healthcare, according to the World Health Organization (as cited in Zieff, Kerr, More and Stoner, 2020) could be defined as the move to ensure “that all people have access to needed health services (including prevention, promotion, treatment, rehabilitation and palliation) of sufficient quality to be effective while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user the financial hardship” (581). According to the authors, one of advantages of universal healthcare is that it leads to a healthier population. This is more so the case given that thanks to universal healthcare, access to treatment and the relevant medical intervention is not founded on the ability of a person/patient to pay, but on their need for the said care. With this in mind, Zieff, Kerr, More and Stoner, 2020 are categorical that in the long-term, this results in a healthier population. There is evidence in support of this assertion from Switzerland. According to Roy (2011), the country, which has in place a highly decentralized universal healthcare system, is considered to have the healthiest people on the planet. It should, however, be noted that a universal healthcare system does have some downsides. For instance, elective procedures could in this case be subject to long wait times. This has been the case in Canada. Martin, Miller, Quesnel-Vallee, Caron, Vissandjee, Marchildon (2018) indicate that one of the issues or concerns currently bedeviling universal healthcare in the country is long wait times for elective care.