Economic Injustice in Healthcare

725 Words3 Pages
Economic injustice is at the root of many of the problems that our society faces. It includes society’s failure to ensure that all individuals have the basic necessities of life. These necessities include: adequate food and housing, access to good healthcare, and a social structure with resources to provide for the needs of its community members. In America, there are huge discrepancies in wealth. These discrepancies are seen in healthcare settings and sometimes affects a person’s ability to receive proper healthcare and/or visit sick family members. Money, transportation, lack of social support have major affects on patients’ hospital experiences. Money plays a major role when dealing with hospitalized patients. Some patients may not have insurance, either because their job does not have an insurance plan or because they can’t afford the insurance their job offers. This may prevent them from seeing a doctor when problems occur. Often, these people wait too long to get the problem checked out. Some examples that would cause them to seek help might be pain that too great for them to bear or a sore on the leg that turns black and has not healed after many weeks. This is just one reason that people who have money may not go to the doctor. Another is that they may feel, and sometimes rightly so, that there is a disparity in the care that poor people receive compared to that of middle to upper income patients. Money is also often necessary to travel to and from the hospital. If a family does not have much money, they may not be able to visit their loved ones while they are hospitalized. If the family uses public transportation because they can’t afford to buy a car and the hospital is not on the public route, this may keep families away from proper medical care and from visiting loved ones. This can lead to the stereotype or misconception that

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