Healthcare

When considering how healthcare is allocated and implemented, I think it is useful to approach the problem of limited resources from multiple perspectives. These perspectives are often limited to a purely economic analysis and a western viewpoint. In the west healthcare providers and Insurance companies are often profit seeking entities set-up in some sense to take advantage of those with ill health.

One of the problems surrounding healthcare in the US is the notion of treating symptoms rather than the root of the problem. That notion can result in the treatment of disease only after it becomes a crisis, rather than the expenditure of resources to prevent the disease in the first place. At the heart of this lies the reality that almost every aspect of health care, has as one of its goals profit maximization. Thus the sources of funding provided by pharmaceutical companies and organizations of like nature are often directed at treatment rather than prevention. This funding makes distribution of drugs to patients more attractive. If we start with the way Health care is taught to doctors we begin to see why being healthy is more a matter of who can pay rather than who needs the resources imminently.

I recently stumbled upon an article from the New York Times discussing why many physicians are moving from private practice to hospitals. This transition has been sparked by various apprehensions concerning the volatile nature of the healthcare market. The article points out some of the shortcomings of the healthcare market, namely, the “fee-for-service payments to doctors, the traditional system where private physicians are paid for each procedure and test, because it drives up the nation’s $2.7 trillion health care bill by rewarding overuse. “ This transition especially with a wave of specialists moving into hospital positions could in fact implement more efficient and cost effective care for patients. However, if the incentives that doctors operate under remain the same, i.e. the more tests and procedures employed, the more money the doctors and the hospitals receive and consequently the more profit they attain. While health care in the United States remains in its current state of flux, whether these changes proposed in the NY Times article may result in more or less efficient provision of health care to the population remains uncertain at best.

To bring this issue into a global context, healthcare allocation incentives are geared towards peoples’ willingness, and in many cases their ability to pay. Unfortunately this is where we find ourselves. Health care should in fact be a human right, and while many objectively share this view, in practice it fails to meet our high hopes. While health care remains as troubled as it is in the US, one of the world’s wealthiest and most developed nations, providing health care to the poorer and less developed nations of the world presents a tremendous problem.  Implementing quality healthcare that is within reach of all people while simultaneously accounting for variations in perspectives regarding what health care is and should be presents a tremendous challenge.