paper4-age based health care

8/12/2019 Paper4-Age Based Health Care

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Age based health care rationing in USA

Health care rationing is a concept which is getting popular day by day in the

circles of medical science. Health care rationing means the provision of medicines

and other articles of health care to the population.

Currently, the concept which is prevalent in the most of the societies is economy

based health care rationing. As the name depicts, the concept implies the surety of

provision to healthcare articles and services to only those who can afford to pay

money against the provision of these things or services.

This type of health care rationing affects almost 15-20% population of USA.

These 15-20% people are either unwilling to buy these provisions against money

or they are too poor to buy. The main thing which is subjugated under health care

rationing is the insurance policy. In USA, government doesnt provide any health

insurance policy currently, on a macro level.

People have to buy their health insurance policies themselves or sometimes their

employers offer this facility as well as other facilities of the healthcare. In such

scenario of health care, the majority population of USA has to rely on their own

funds or on their employers for the healthcare and health insurance.

This is quite an alarming situation and isnt restricted only to USA. There are

many countries which are facing the adverse conditions of healthcare provisions.

Sometimes insurance companies despite having agreements with some big

organizations and corporations, hinder the employees way to insurance by


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holding some pre-screening tests and judging the conditions of the employee and

then they refuse to have an insurance agreement with the employee.

Recently, a new concept of healthcare has been introduced and it is called age

based health care. This concept ensures that some fraction of the total population

gets the health care facilities, either total or partial. How that fraction will be

figured out is determined by age.

The originally proposed plan is to offer more services of healthcare to younger

individuals than to the old ones. This plan may sound weird but is good actually

by many aspects. For example, this based healthcare plan is likely to be opted by

governments of different countries, thereby shedding the load of healthcare from

the shoulders of the citizens.

Another benefit of this plan is that the government will be better able to control

the prices of drugs since once adopted, this plan will demand that government

takes the expenses of age based health care to itself either partially or completely.

This project has critical importance for some nations. USA and Japan are two

major examples. In Japan, quite a big portion of the population is older than 60

years. The number of young people is decreasing there for many reasons. Since

we are not meant to discuss and analyze that case in detail here, lets take the case

of USA.

At present, 13% or more population of USA belongs to age group which has the

lower limit of 65 years and the percentage is increasing day by day. It is expected

that by the year 2030, this percentage will rise to nearly 21%. This means that


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people belonging to younger ages, will keep decreasing as a fraction of USs

society.

Moreover, the age group which is expanding rapidly has a lower age limit of 80

years. These trends relating to USA are quite alarming because youth is the

backbone of any country. From, man power to other walks of life you mostly need

young people in order to have excellent performance. Their depletion will mean a

reduction in countrys assets.

Moreover, the fact is that average age of human beings is nearly 60 to 65 years at

maximum these days (considering medical options only and ignoring the social

factors i.e. wars, famines etc.). So, it means that those who are more than 60 years

old, have already lived a time period which is the total life span of a human being

on average. In such a scenario, they should not have any problem with such kind

of proposals.

This plan may seem unfair apparently, but the thing is that it ensures the safer

future of young generation in general. Some may argue that differentiating on the

basis of the age, in the provision of healthcare facilities is not in accord with the

fundamentals of justice and equality. For such people, Id like to mention that

equality and justice, although used in an interchangeable manner in daily routine,

arent exactly the same things.

How arent equality and justice the same things? Ill show you in the following

lines. Equality means to distribute resources among all equally, without any

discrimination on any basis, whereas justice demands that each one gets fairly


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enough to meet his needs and requirements easily. Thats the difference.People

from older age groups are those who have spent their lives doing jobs, either

public/ private or government. Therefore these people have enough resources

usually, to afford the health care rationing. This is the perfect reason why I

suggest that government should not be a patron for healthcare provisions to old

citizens.

Government should instead focus on providing the younger age groups since the

people belonging to them are struggling and do not have enough funds available

as savings to fight their sickness and diseases. Their recovery from the disease

with governments funds may provide the country with at least 25-30 years of

their service which is not a bad deal.

If government cant sponsor age based health care plans fully, then it should at

least give some subsidy on health care on the basis of age of the individuals.

Some other measures can be taken as well. For example, government may

implement age based health care plans only for major diseases i.e. heart diseases,

cancer of very early and curable stage etc. Government may ask the individuals,

whether young or older, to bear the expenses of their minor diseases and routine

checkups themselves.

Government may give health based loans on the basis of age groups. This is also a

part of age based health care and it makes more sense the chances of having the

original amount of debt as well as interest are more than those of older age groups

which may depart the world any time.


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References

Shelp, E. E. (Ed.). (1981). Justice and health care. Reidel.

World Health Organization, & Unicef. (1978). Health: a time for justice, primary health care.

Williams, A., & Evans, J. G. (1997). The rationing debate. Rationing health care by age. BMJ: British Medical

Journal, 314(7083), 820.

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