Population Without Health Care

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A third of the American Population without Healthcare…. “Provision of health care is a human right and a country as wealthy as ours should not have a third of its population without access to proper health care.” This is a very meaningful and powerful statement to those who it pertains to, but is this statement true? The pros and cons of this issue are being debated constantly especially with the recent Affordable Healthcare for America Act being passed by the United States House of Representatives. The functionalist theoretical perspective definitely supports the statement and the recent act as they believe that if society is to be stable, then it is important for people to be healthy and to contribute. I am indifferent…show more content…
Having a third of our population without healthcare may sound bad; however, some would argue that we are sticking to the roots of our founding fathers who wanted the power to be in the people. They wanted less government control and more individual responsibility to make it or break it. When referring to the idea of “make it or break it”, in this sense, it refers to whether or not the people were successful enough to pay for healthcare or whether they were less fortunate and were not successful enough to pay for health care. This is what makes America so great, while it does create a third of the population to have no healthcare, it generates brilliant thinkers and entrepreneurs that makes our great society what it has become today. Having a third of the population without healthcare allows hard working Americans that own businesses, or who have worked hard to make the amount of money they have, to be taxed fairly and not to have to pay higher taxes for other Americans who were less fortunate and could not afford healthcare. The question in this case…show more content…
As previously stated, functionalist believe that if a society is to be stable, then it is important for people to be healthy and to contribute. If a third of the American population is deprived of healthcare, several people would be unhealthy and unable to contribute to the society. Some people are sick and unable to work due to a specific illness, however, these people are still unable to receive healthcare because they do not have a job that provides them with the benefit of healthcare and they do not have the money to pay for it. In sociologist, functionalist, Talcott Parsons sick role, the idea that sick people who are unable to work and receive health care, is completely contradicted, in the first section when he states, “People who are sick are not responsible for their condition. It is assumed that being sick is not a deliberate and knowing choice of the sick person.” (Parsons, 1951) In this quote, Parsons is basically stating that people become sick and it is not their fault, so these people should not be held responsible for coming down with the illnesses they came down with. In this system where a third of the population is without healthcare, part of this third could consist of the sick who are basically being held responsible for becoming sick. Functionalists would have also been in strong favor of the Affordable Healthcare for America Act which was passed recently. This
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