Essay Sample on Mitigating Healthcare Inequality

Introduction

Empirical studies have shown that most of the global healthcare sectors are beneficiaries of huge budgetary allocations towards giving equity health care. However, the available evidence shows that the marginalized populations are continuously struggling to pay for their medical services. As these patterns continue, Saito, Gilmour & Yoneoka et al. (2016), asserts that universal health coverage must focus on providing equal healthcare services for the poor without imposing financial risk on them. More so, many policymakers are continually pushing for equal treatment for people with similar healthcare needs regardless of their cultural and socioeconomic to improve healthcare systems. At the same time, many governments have been adjusting their healthcare expenditure upwards towards providing equal access to healthcare services (WHO, 2014). This scenario explains why between 2000 and 2011, the world had increased public expenditure per individual to 93%, and more so, 127% among developing nations and, more so, changing their parities in purchasing power. Costly private and public medical bills and reluctance to get free medical services by inadequate means there is no equity health care despite budgetary allocations, thus the need for awareness to achieving this objective.

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Nepal's per capita public expenditure on health matters grew from $11 to$ 29 within the same period. In this country, more than 8-% of the public health expenditure shapes the public service providers through the input-based funding (Saito et al., 2016). This concept allows public service health facilities to access funding towards sustaining their operational expenditure. Such a situation explains why most free- healthcare services emerge at the primary healthcare centers, health posts, and publicly-funded district healthcare facilities.

Denying the Poor Equal Medical Services Violates Human Rights

Despite the massive budgetary allocations for health care services, there is limited information that the modern health funding systems permit equity use of healthcare. This approach aims at undermining peoples' rights to sound health hence violating human rights (Saito et al., 2016). According to WHO (2014), health care prevails as a fundamental human right because, through it, there is sustainable human health. In this setting, when health facilities are offering costly medical services, they segregate against the poor as they favor the wealthy. This concept is likely to discourage the underprivileged populations from accessing preventive care hence undermining their wellbeing and increasing their risk of diseases.

Achieving equity in healthcare requires that people with the same level of health care need to get uniform treatment. It is, therefore, critical that one gets equity in utilization instead of accessing healthcare. This scenario emerges since obtaining could denote the chance of getting healthcare, whereas the use refers to exercising the opportunity (Marmot & Allen, 2014). Studies evaluating equity in the typical healthcare utilization among OCD nations have consistently found for- the wealthy concertation in doctors' follow-ups, including areas where public expenditure aims at covering most of the healthcare costs with a similar scenario merging among some Asia countries. (Saito et al., 2016). Either African countries have also characterized a lack of healthcare equity.

This research relies on a sample of 2000 households to evaluate the inequity and inequality in Nepal's present healthcare funding model. Firstly, the study outcomes concurred with the previous findings, thus showing the significant focus on pro-rich among individual healthcare utilization in Nepal towns. According to the earlier studies, the need factors like sex, age, and self-reporting wellness situation takes place in a poverty-oriented path. Nevertheless, this study discovered that self-reporting of hypertension or diabetes, work primarily towards rich-oriented healthcare usage as the impact of new self-reporting ailments or signs remained either poor-oriented or those supporting the rich. Such a situation could emerge due to the concentration of self-reporting prevalence of diabetes or hypertension among the wealthier people, as exemplified in Urban Nepal, despite failing to include the undiagnosed cases (WHO 2014). This study focused on the unwanted factors hence indicating that high school or tertiary education harms healthcare usage among the poor. This episode deviates from the previous outcome, which showed that such literacy patterns create a wealthy-oriented effect on health care use. Even at that, there was a correlation with the result from low-income studies, especially the African Anglophone nations (Saito et al. 2016). In this context, high school or tertiary levels of literacy in pro-poor usage could mean that literates can identify and decide on how to use cost-effective healthcare services.

This study also showed similarities with the previous findings, which had demonstrated that household consumption facilitates the significant wealthy-focused contribution in using medical services. This income gradient remains a valid entity in the private sector because Nepal individual medical givers thrive on a fee-for-service concept which compels clients to cater for complete medical care. Unfortunately, this research found no proof that the poor utilized public health services and are least likely to thrive the healthcare usage despite changing factors that hinder their access to equity care and introducing free services (Marmot & Allen 2014). The said trend deviates from Hong Kong's patterns, which had shown that less privileged individuals use public services at public hospitals as the country maintains tax-based health financing to cater to public services (Saito et al., 2016). Other studies have shown that lack of satisfaction with issues like long waiting times, medical equipment, and drug shortages often reduces rates of utilization.

According to Saito et al. (2016), one of the most critical reasons for underusing public hospitals could force patients to pay from their savings. For instance, Nepal's government hospitals acquire funds from the treasury inform of salaried doctors, and staff delivers health care services. Despite an endorsement of the 2013 NHI guideline to provide universal funding for financial immunity and health service, there is no proof for its implementation as of today even as the payment of economic privilege remains rare due to the country's insignificant fiscal space (Saito et al. 2016). Also, other factors include the popular subsidiary programs, unstable exits between hospital needs and patients' financial capacity, and the ability of patients to pay. Despite offering free critical medicine at the public hospitals, patients in the modern health care framework have to part with a high cost of services and medication for non-communicable ailments, as well as medical examinations.

Proposed Interventions for Equity Health Care

One of the best approaches to achieving uniform medical services for most of the people depends on other funding strategies. Here, the establishment of a small-scale health insurance initiative finance the cost of primary non-communicable ailments could help to achieve this objective (Bonfrer et al., 2014). More so, the national government could consolidate the risk-pooling for all insurance companies towards increasing its coverage concerning the general populations of the unprivileged. China applied this method by conducting its urban health reform, thereby causing a significant equity healthcare accessibility through the use of out-patient interventions early in the 1990s (Saito et al. 2016). The improvement and quality administration of medical practitioners could also foster quality usage of healthcare facilities by the marginalized populations towards giving them a cost-effective model for waiving the cost of particular health conditions.

Conclusion

Recent studies have proved that as policymakers continue creating bills to foster equity health care services, many medical facilities are employing policies that discourage the poor from accessing these services. The wealthy-oriented systems among public and private health facilities have constructed a negative attitude among the poor who often feel reluctant to utilize the available opportunities because of the stigma they often experience. There is a need for further intervention by policymakers to reduce the cost of medical care among critical diseases and enhance proper managerial strategies on hospital facilities.

References

Bonfrer, I., Poel, V., E., Grimm, M., & Doorslaer, V., E. (2014). Does the distribution of healthcare utilization match need in Africa? Health Policy and Planning, March 29.

Marmot, Michael & Allen, J., Jessica (2014). Social Determinants of Health Equity. American Public Health Association, September 24. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4151898/

Saito, E., Gilmou, S., Yoneoka D., Shyam, G., Rahman M., M., et al. (2016). Inequality and inequity in healthcare utilization in urban Nepal: a cross-sectional observational study. Health Policy and Planning, October 31. https:// doi: 10.1093/heapol/czv137

World Health Organization (2014). World Health Statistics, 2014. (In IRIS). Geneva: World Health Organization. World Health Organization, February 26.