Why is Healthcare Important - The Reason It Should Be Affordable

One of the most trending topics when voting for a presidential candidate or state representative is healthcare. Everyone wants to know the candidates plans for keeping the average American healthy and worry free when it comes to their medical plans. People turn to health care as a means to function as normally as possible. So why is healthcare important? This essay states that health care is important because it can help fix something that’s essentially “broken” in you, whether it be physical, emotional, mental, internal or external. One turns to healthcare as a means to back you up when times are difficult, especially when you are poor or close to being poor.

When it comes to healthcare there are different theories of justice that can either agree or disagree with the topic of free Medicare for all. The differences between libertarian, utilitarian and egalitarian theories come with their view of what is just. When we refer to what is just we go back to what Lewis Vaughn said in Chapter 1, “Justice in the most general sense refers to people getting what is fair or what is their due.” When we speak about healthcare we turn to a different type of justice called distributive justice which according to Vaughn is “justice regarding the fair distribution of society’s advantages and disadvantages,or benefits and burdens including income, poverty ,employment, rights , taxes and public service.”

There are two main theories of justice that view the healthcare dilemma in opposite sides of the spectrum. I will speak of Liberitarian theories of justice first, which in summary says that the burdens of a society should be by having the role of a government “that protect the rights of individuals to freely pursue their own interests in the economic marketplace without violations of their liberty through coercion, manipulation or fraud.” This means that Libertarians don’t lean towards the idea of free healthcare because it would take away part of their freedom, these people prefer their liberty overall. They believe that the government does not have the obligation to “adjust the distribution of benefits and burdens among people”. According to Vaughn these people believe that the distribution of health care should be the responsibility of “free and autonomous individuals.”

In this view, Vaughn shares that “no one has the right to healthcare and a government program using tax dollars to provide universal healthcare or even health care only for low income families would be unjust.” According to a liberarian point of view programs like healthcare for all would be considered a “violation” of people’s rights to use their resources as they see fit. They believe that if the government does provide free healthcare to all New Yorkers or Americans that the government would be acting in an unjustly manner. I don’t agree with this theory and I lean more towards the Egalitarian theories of justice. Norman Daniel mentions how libertarians might see this as a “bottomless pit” and that’s because they see it as a continuously expanding scope of medical needs. Meaning that protecting such an expensive right to healthcare would assure the non-violation of their rights to liberty and property.

Egalitarian theories of justice make mention that important benefits and burdens of society should be “distributed equally.” This is opposite of the Liberatarian and it’s the theory I agree with the most. It offers a guaranteed minimum level of healthcare for everyone or mainly lean towards providing care for those who need it the most. This view is a positive right view meaning that it sides with the idea of individuals having the right to free healthcare. This view claims that as a society we have an obligation to provide benefits, especially one as important as healthcare.

In Norman Daniels “ Is There a Right to Health Care and ,If So, What Does It Encompass” reading Daniels argues for a strong right to health care in a principle to raise a “fair equality of opportunity.” He says that disease and disability “diminish people’s normal functioning”therefore it restricts the range of opportunities open to them and I couldn’t agree more. People are entitled to fair equality of opportunity, therefore I think that it should include a proper health care that can protect or restore opportunities.

Daniels mentions that “health care aims to keep people functioning as close to normally as possible.” He claims that the primary social obligation is to essentially assure everyone access to a “tier or services that effectively promotes normal functioning and thus protects equality of opportunities. Since people are entitled to equal opportunities without healthcare it wouldn’t be equal anymore, it would be unbalanced because those without healthcare wouldn’t be apt to perform as well on a daily as someone with health insurance. His claims also go with how someone without health insurance is a major financial burden as well as a health risk. People who aren’t covered aren’t equal in opportunity, financially, health wise and in normal functioning.

I stand with the belief that any one should be able to get health insurance for free without having age, race, sex or income being a factor in New York. I think it’s only fair and right because overall it can stop diseases from all spectrums of society to reduce from spreading. Diseases shorten our lives or impair our ability to function. I look at it this way, if a house cleaner from a low income area with no health insurance is sick with a disease that is contagious and cleans for a house whose owners are rich, the rich owner is running the risk of getting sick as well, no matter if he has insurance or not. Diseases have no particular preferences, it can affect anyone. Having health insurance reduces the risk of diseases, medicines like antibiotics can control the spread of it. If someone can’t afford a medicine that prevents diseases from spreading than it will only spread to more and more people instead of only staying within that one person.

I think that people have the moral right to healthcare. I believe that there should be a positive right and that society has an obligation to provide it. If people don’t help each other out or at least those who are in a situation that need the help than it will only produce harm, more social injustices and higher levels of frustrations. There are many reasons why everyone should have health care not only the rich and not only the poor. From the decrease of deaths, the decrease in the spread of diseases to the peace of mind of many New Yorkers. If the poor benefit from health insurance it’s only fair that a rich person has these benefits as well. Taxpayers money should be used for benefiting everyone, even if that means cutting certain liberties of people. I believe that it would be benefiting more than causing any inconvenience. It’s morally right that everyone has at least a minimal coverage, for the benefit of everyone in New York and hopefully it expands to the whole United States.

Works Cited

• Vaughn, Lewis. Bioethics: Principles, Issues, And Cases. New York : Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.
• Daniels, Norman. Is There a Right to Health Care and, If So, What does it Encompass?