Nursing HW on Social Justice

What does social justice mean to you? Is social justice the same as socialized medicine or even communism?

Social justice is the equality in opportunities, privileges and rights for every individual in a given society regardless of their economic, political and social orientation.

Social justice can be said to be similar to communism and socialized medicine because they all have equality and fairness approaches. They all fight any discrimination in the society and fight for equal treatment of every person.

The notion of social justice is fairness so that everyone can achieve a certain level of health and wellness. After all, the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to pursue happiness. Is the health care system fair?

The healthcare system is not fair as there are very many cases of discrimination and variation in the provision of health care to different people. Many Americans rely on private health insurance making quality healthcare only affordable to only those who can afford the insurance. This discriminates the poor people who cannot afford insurance coverage (Iglehart 2014).

The cost of health care in America is very high and hence not accessible to the poor people. Many people have been made very poor in the process of acquiring quality healthcare especially the people suffering from terminal illnesses like cancer.

Racial bias is continuously seen in American health care system where black people cannot easily access quality health care (Johnstone 2016).

Shortage of health care practitioners in America renders the health care system unfair because each physician serves very many patients at time and many citizens cannot have good health care provision because of the few physicians.

If you could wave a magic wand and fix the health care system, what is the first thing you would notice indicating that it had changed? Or, in your opinion, do you think it needs to be changed at all?

If I changed the health care system, I would check the success if all the people can access free and quality healthcare in all the regions of the continent without any race or gender discrimination. I would also be assured of the success by reduced time by which patients take to acquire health care. A reduced ratio of patient to physicians would also indicate success in the health care system.

American health care system needs to be fixed for delivery of improved health care to all citizens.

References

Johnstone, J. K. (2016). The American health care system: managed care.

Iglehart, J. K. (2014). The American health care system. New England Journal of Medicine, 340(1), 70-76.