SOCIAL JUSTICE

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Csilla Orban Bonacci

Main Discussion Post

Personally, I think everyone deserves care. Are we just going to treat human life like it is not worth anything just because they have no money? It is a human being. I believe they do deserve help. What if it were in their shoes, poor, or had a tragedy, or our kids were sick would we want a hospital to turn us away for lack of money? Medicine has become a business in this country and it does bother me. It is ok to be a business to a certain extent, but not at the cost of lives. Also, some of the services hospitals may charge are way too expensive. Think about a dentist charging $ 800 for a crown. I mean the material that goes into the making of that crown is probably more like $200. But then the dentist charges $800. To me, it seems more like an overpriced tooth. Surgeries cost 50,000 and above. I used to work for an insurance company and doctors would call asking for their money and more than they deserved. The insurance company had to balance it out and tell them n, no, we will give you the money based on the market price, not your wishes. I feel like we live in a society that is money-hungry and not patient oriented. This is my opinion and I feel strongly about this. 

Every human life deserves care. One thing hospitals can do to save money if they feel like it is unjust is to hire people, like me, who know how to save and not waste. I have seen hospitals wasting materials. If personnel could be taught not to waste then we would save a lot of money (Bharsakade et. al, 2021).

Also, how about not building the rooms so spacious? Some hospital rooms are way too big for one patient. You could fit 20 people in there. What is the point? Build with saving more resources in mind ( Maben et. al, 2015).  Then we complain that we do not have enough beds. We need to train the patient that does if you want to be treated and have any opportunity at all or do they want a big room. Which is more important? There is a lot of waste going on in hospitals, clinics, and health departments. Maybe because Americans are used to just having a lot, but the world is not infinite in resources. We need to learn to save. Many times nurses take way too many flushes or bandages with them and if they do not use them they leave them in the patients' rooms and then get thrown away. Waste. How about wasting narcotics or heparin? We pull a vial of 2ml and we use 1ml. We throw away the other half but charge the patient for the whole? That is not fair either to the patient. Same with morphine, and oxycodone. Great medicines that other countries lack and yet we just waste them like no big deal. 

There is a social injustice when it comes to healthcare costs because half of the population spends more than 50% of the costs of medical care and the bottom half, the poor, barely utilize 3-4% of the costs and yet we want to consider them unfair to ask for help since they have no money to pay. We need to look at those who spend the most and on what. We need accountants to look at the hospital costs and financial experts to fix this. I personally am of the belief that everyone deserves help and we should treat everyone fair because tomorrow it might be you. Tomorrow if it is you and they think that way of you, you would not like it. We need to be more resourceful in our spending and materials (Agboola et. al, 2018).  We need to fix this issue in a different way and not by refusing care to poor people. Some maybe had money and they paid when they did and then later maybe an accident happened or something unfortunate. They already have enough to deal with. Let us not take their care away.  Is human life only valuable if they have money? We gotta find a different way. Learn from other countries to do better because, in spite of us being the USA and spending so much, the medical care here is not the best in the world. There are countries with better care and less cost. 

 

 

 

 

Agboola S, Simons M, Golas S, Op den Buijs J, Felsted J, Fischer N, Schertzer L, Orenstein A, Jethwani K, Kvedar J. Health Care Cost Analyses for Exploring Cost Savings Opportunities in Older Patients: Longitudinal Retrospective Study. JMIR Aging. 2018 Aug 1;1(2):e10254. doi: 10.2196/10254. PMID: 31518241; PMCID: PMC6714998.

Bharsakade RS, Acharya P, Ganapathy L, Tiwari MK. A lean approach to healthcare management using multi-criteria decision making. OPSEARCH. 2021;58(3):610–35. doi: 10.1007/s12597-020-00490-5. Epub 2021 Jan 1. PMCID: PMC7775731.

Maben J, Griffiths P, Penfold C, Simon M, Anderson JE, Robert G, Pizzo E, Hughes J, Murrells T, Barlow J. Does one size fit all? Mixed methods evaluation of the impact of 100% single-room accommodation on staff and patient experience, safety, and costs. BMJ Qual Saf. 2016 Apr;25(4):241-56. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004265. Epub 2015 Sep 25. PMID: 26408568; PMCID: PMC4819646.