Health Services as a Right for All Citizens - Essay Example

?Health Services as a Right for All Citizens Citizenship has been defined as a collectionof rights and obligations of the citizens. There are a number of rights that are held by the citizens which they can legitimately enforce and there are a number of obligations that they are bound to fulfill in return. The question that would be taken into consideration in this essay is; should access to health services be regarded as a right for all citizens when it is a scarce resource for some of our citizens? Access to health services is a very sensitive issue because of a number of factors. The most important factor of all is that health services are highly important for all the citizens. All the citizens need medical attention at one time or the other and this attribute makes health services one of the most basic services that should be available to all the citizens. Another factor that makes health services a highly sensitive issue is its scarcity. Health services are expensive because of the resources required in order to make health services available. Therefore, providing access to health services to all the citizens is a difficult task for the governmental authorities. There are a number of resources that are required to provide health services to the citizens. Initially, there need to be enough number of doctors and physicians to cater the needs of a large number of citizens. There need to be facilities such as clinics and hospitals where such services will be provided. There needs to be enough medical equipment that is utilized for diagnosis purposes. Therefore the staff, geographical facilities and equipment collectively become huge resources that need to be taken care of in order to provide unhindered health services to the citizens. Therefore, the question whether health services should be a right of all citizens will be evaluated further and it would be considered whether it is possible in one way or the other to provide health services to all the citizens. HEALTH ISSUES IN AUSTRALIA According to the report presented by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2000, there is a comprehensive account of the health issues which are most common in the vicinity. There is a comprehensive list of the health problems and with each health problem there is a summary of its occurrence in the vicinity. This report evidences the fact that there are a number of health problems to be dealt with in Australia therefore the regulatory authorities need to take effective steps in order to ensure that the citizens are provided access to health services so that they may be able to protect themselves from the health issues found in the vicinity. The Report covers the overall health of Australia using certain indicators such as; life expectancy, self-rated health status, fitness, sexual health, oral health and immunological health. By considering all these factors on a sample basis, the research was carried out and the overall health status of the population of Australia was found out. According to the report, the major diseases that are observed in Australia are; cardiovascular diseases, cancers, injuries, mental problems and disorders, diabetes and asthma. Cardiovascular diseases are responsible for 40% of all the deaths. Based on a survey, it was concluded that 16% of the Australian population had cardiovascular problems (George 1998). All these are major health issues have very expensive treatments and this fact makes it difficult for all the citizens to receive quality treatment for these diseases. Since the ratio of these diseases is high therefore a significant amount of resources would be required in order to provide health services to citizens with regard to these diseases. If it is assumed that the regulatory authorities have decided to provide health services to citizens as their basic right, there would be a large of cancer patients that would require treatment for cancer. It is well known that treatment of cancer is highly expensive as it requires chemotherapy which consists of a course of very expensive radioactive injections. Thus, if the regulatory authorities provide cancer treatment to all the citizens suffering from cancer, it would not be unable to allocate the budget to any other disease or to conduct any research work. DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH ISSUES Apart from the comprehensive explanation of the diseases, the report also states the factors that could help the regulatory authorities prevent the occurrence of diseases. According to the report, the factors that determine the health status of a population and the factors that can help in prevention of health issues are; environmental factors, genetic factors, attitudes and beliefs, lifestyle and behavior, and biomedical factors. The environmental factors that determine the health status in the vicinity are; chemical factors, biological factors, social factors, economic factors and political factors. The educational background and economic stability of the people lead them toward making healthy choices. Chemical and biological factors include the quality and safety of the air, water and soil. Factors such as poor disposal of chemical residue can have significant impact on the health of the citizens. Some diseases are hereditary and depend upon the genetic build-up of a person. The report also considers the genetic diseases which are most commonly found in the vicinity. Knowledge, beliefs and attitude of citizens also determine the health status of the people as these are the factors that determine the lifestyle of the people and drive them towards healthy decisions. Biomedical determinants of health include; blood pressure, blood cholesterol and body weight. The average biomedical statistics can represent the health status of the citizens therefore this report also presents the statistics regarding these factors. RESONS BEHIND THE SCARCITY OF QUALITY HEALTH SERVICES According to Fletcher (2000), there is significant gap between the quality of health services provided in Australia and the optimum level of the quality of health services. The report presented by Fletcher suggests that if health services are left to be operated without government intervention, the quality would drop instead of rising because the resources required in order to ensure the provision of high quality health services are significantly scarce and the private sector may not have access to such resources that are needed for high quality health services. If the government does not intervene in the health services, the citizens would be left with a poor system of health care and the diseases as mentioned above would only rise instead of being controlled (Wilkinson). Therefore, the intervention of regulatory authorities in health services is highly important. The goals of the regulatory authorities in order to create a high quality health care system include; establishment of an overall system of high quality health services, a system which utilizes its available resources in the optimum manner, and the establishment of a system which not only supports intervention of regulatory authorities but also ensures the satisfaction of both the provider of health services and the person being provided with those services. The citizens residing in rural areas should be taken into consideration in this regard because they have the least access to quality health service (Strong 1998). Quality health services, despite being highly important to all the citizens, are very scarce for most of the citizens because of being economically inaccessible (Lapsley 2000). Quality health services, as mentioned above, are very costly to provide due to the scarcity of resources that are needed to provide quality health services. The providers of health services cannot raise the quality of health services without raising the overall cost unless the regulatory authorities decide to intervene and fund them for the purpose (Peterson 1996). In the current economic scenario, not all the citizens have enough resources to acquire quality health services. Therefore, it may be highly important that the government intervenes and ensures that all the citizens receive reasonable quality of health services at an affordable cost (Knapman 1999). Health sector in Australia is funded by government and the non-government sectors. Different statistics suggest that more than two-third of the total funding in health sector was provided by the government in the year 1997-1998. There are certain common diseases that account for the significant part of the health expenditure in Australia. Such diseases are cardiovascular diseases which cost around $3.7 billion each year which is 11.8% of the total expenditure on health care, digestive system diseases also cost around $3.7 billion. Therefore, in order to provide quality health services to all the citizens, government will have to make significant contributions in the health care system. The regulatory authorities cannot regard health service as a basic right of the citizens due to its high cost but certain steps can be taken in order to ensure that citizens have access to health care services at reasonable costs. HEALTH SERVICES AS A BASIC RIGHT The question arises at this point, whether health services should be regarded as a basic right of the citizens. From the discussion presented above, it can be inferred that it cannot be practicable for the regulatory authorities to provide quality health services to all the citizens at low cost because health care services are expensive and the resources required to provide health services are scarce, however there can be a number of alternative solutions to this problem. Following are the alternative solutions to the problem of health care services being the basic right of the citizens. In order to ensure that health care services are provided to all the citizens regardless of their economic background, the regulatory authorities may determine policies and procedures in order to charge costs in accordance with the economic background of the citizens. The cost of health services should be determined in accordance with the annual income of the citizen. If the regulatory authorities are of the view that the citizen would be able to bear the costs, he should be charged normal costs for the health services he receives, however, if the regulatory authorities are of the view that the annual income of the citizen is such that he will not be able to bear the costs of health services, he should be given certain relaxations as approved by the regulatory authorities. Therefore, the citizens who are unable to pay for the health services would be able to receive equal quality health services as received by those who have higher income. This alternative solution can help the regulatory authorities ensure the access to basic health services to all the citizens (Gray 2006). Another solution that can be pursued by the regulatory authorities in this regard is the reallocation of budget to health services. The allocation of the budget should be increased in order to ensure that the resources required in order to ensure the provision of health services are properly acquired. The funding for the budget should be done through the revenues received from the taxes. Taxes paid by citizens are the main source of funding for all the government projects and in order to increase the funding in health services, increasing the taxes for this purpose would be the only way for the regulatory authorities. Therefore, the regulatory authorities should design new taxes in such a manner that they do not become a burden on the citizens with lower levels of income. Regulatory authorities can consider increasing the tax rate on a progressive basis, i.e. higher rate of tax to citizens with higher income and lower rate of tax to citizens with lower income. Citizens who have a higher annual income would be liable to pay more tax as compared to the citizens with lower income. The economic equality would also be pursued by this step (Parsons 1951). Another solution of decreasing the cost of health services is to prevent the diseases from increasing. As mentioned above, cardiovascular diseases and digestive problems account for the major proportion of the overall expenditure on the health services therefore, in order to cut costs on the overall health services, the regulatory authorities should take steps in order to prevent such diseases from taking place. As mentioned above, the determinants of the overall health can be used in order to prevent the diseases from increasing thus lowering the overall cost of the health care services. Regulatory authorities can encourage such fitness programs that include cardio workouts which can help the citizens remain fit and prevent cardiovascular diseases. The regulatory authorities can encourage fitness programs that help the citizens take healthy decisions which can help them stay fit. CONCLUSION Thus, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that the quality of health services in Australia is not at its optimum and the access to health services is unaffordable for most of the citizens. The reason behind the lack of access to health services is the scarcity of resources which are required for the provision of unhindered health services to citizens. It has been observed that the diseases which account for the most of the budget of health services are cardiovascular diseases and digestive problems therefore in order to prevent such diseases, regulatory authorities may introduce fitness programs. Overall it was observed that due to the expensive nature of the health services, government cannot provide health services as the basic right of the citizens but it can take certain steps in order to ensure the provision of high quality health services to all the citizens. Such steps may be relaxation of expenses to the citizens who cannot afford to pay complete expenses of the health services received by them and increase of budget allocation to health services through revenue generated from progressive taxation. REFERENCES Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2000) Australia's health 2000, AGPS, Canberra. Fletcher, M (2000) ‘The quality of Australian health care: current issues and future directions’, Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, Occasional papers: Financing Series, Volume 6, Canberra. George, J and Davis, A (1998) States of health: health and illness in Australia, 3rd ed, Longman, South Melbourne. Gray, D.E. (2006) Health Sociology, An Australian Perspective, Pearson Prentice Hall, Frenchs Forest. Knapman, C (1999) ‘Older age and health’, in Grbich, C (ed.) Health in Australia: sociological concepts and issues, Prentice Hall Australia. Lapsley, H (2000) ‘Quality measures in Australian health care’, in Bloom, A (ed.) Health reform in Australia and New Zealand, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne. Parsons, T (1951) The social system, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Peterson, A and Lupton, D (1996) The new public health, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards. Strong, K, Trickett, P, Titulaer, J and Bhahia, K (1998) Health in rural and remote Australia, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra. Wilkinson, R and Marmott, M, (eds) Social determinants of health: the solid facts, World Health Organisation Europe. Read More