U.S. Healthcare System the Ethics

¶ … U.S. Healthcare System

The Ethics of the United States Health Care System From the Perspective of Doctors and Patients

According to the World Health Organization's 2004 statistics, the United States' total expenditure on health care as a percentage of GDP was 15.4%, with 44.7% of that expenditure covered by the government and the public responsible for 55.3% (World Health Organization, 2007). Unlike other industrialized nations like Canada, Great Britain, and France, the United Sates does not have a universal healthcare system. Instead, the country that most believe is the world's richest in terms of comfort has adopted a system based on services demanded and a patient's ability to pay instead of services needed and benefits received. The opposite views of 2008 presidential candidates John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have highlighted the two major positions represented in the United States. McCain favors a private insurance reform while both Clinton and Obama favor national plans. Regardless of the politics that surround the issue, however, the opinions of health care professionals and millions of uninsured who struggle with health problems without treatment emphasize the fact that the current system of demand-based healthcare is unethical.

While some opponents of national health care system, or a system based on services needed rather than an individual's ability to pay, have suggested that doctors and other health care professionals are opposed to the idea, data suggests otherwise. In fact, according to a recent Reuters article, "more than half of U.S. doctors support switching to a national health care plan." Traditionally, those opposed to national healthcare, and most doctors, believed adopting a nationalized system would result in lower salaries for health care professionals, less competition, and ultimately, a poorer quality of health care. Doctors now believe, however, that the United States' "patchwork system" of private insurance, cash patients, and Medicare and Medicaid is "obstructing good patient care" (U.S. Doctors, 2008). Thus, politicians on soapboxes are not the only ones crying about the unethical practices of national healthcare. Though Physicians for a National Healthcare Plan admit that specialized doctors will not be paid as much under nationalized health care as they were under the private system, the group agrees that the ethics of national healthcare outweigh the economics (Single-Payer Frequently Asked Questions).

Though even those who might suffer from nationalized health care have admitted that the services demanded approach to the issue is unethical and must change, they are not the only ones involved in health care that prefer a services-needed-based, or nationalized, health care system. While patients are currently being treated unethically by the U.S. system that values patients by their ability to pay, a 2004 study showed that patients receiving health care in a variety of nations with nationalized services were generally satisfied with their health care (Wensing and Szecsenyi, 2004).