When I was on the airplane flying from my home country to Atlanta to pursue a degree in public health, I was thinking about why, in a country like the United States of America, which is supposed to be the best in many fields, people suffer from many health issues. Why doesn't a country like the United States, a country founded on rights, fulfill one of the most basic human rights?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family."
I was astonished when Robert K. Merritt, MA, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Health Policy and Management Department at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, informed me that the percentage of people who are not covered by health insurance in Georgia is about 18 percent and that about 17 states suffer from the same problem. According to the Census Bureau report, the number of people who were not covered by health insurance in United States in 2011 was roughly 48.6 million or about 15.7 percent of the total population.
This is shocking due to the fact that the U.S. is globally ranked as the highest in spending on health care: the health expenditures here neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, over 10 times the $256 billion spent in 1980, which is over $8,000 per person.
The people who don't have health insurance have not made enough progress in terms of access to health insurance coverage since the late eighties, and people still suffer from many non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, 20 percent of the GDP is expected to be spent on health services in 2020. It is projected that the percentage of uninsured people will increase over time because job losses are increasing while, at the same time, health insurance premiums are rising.
Although the U.S. has a large health burden, it still offers some of the highest quality health care, to the extent that some countries' kings and presidents prefer to receive treatment here. One of the main obstacles of free, universal health care is achieving high health service quality for everyone. I worked for a year in Saudi Arabia, which has high quality health services, but not at the same caliber of the United States.
The free health service there is accessible to all citizens: any citizen can access primary health care or governmental hospital and get the benefits of health service. Britain, another country that has universal health care, also has made noticeable progress in fighting communicable and non-communicable diseases in people between the ages of 55 and 64. This is better progress than the United States has made.
This begs the question: do all Americans deserve health care? If so, why do we let the uninsured suffer from diseases until their conditions become unbearable and they have to go to the emergency room? And after that, they get into trouble for being in debt to the hospital. At the same time, everybody else can see that they are uninsured because they do not have enough money to cover their health before it has deteriorated. So, why do we let this vicious cycle occur between citizens and hospitals? Is it because the patient was sick? Why is the patient always the victim?
I think it is time to see the American government unite with health insurance companies for the sake of the patients, even if it is against stakeholders like food and drug companies: unite to look at the health of patients, not at their pockets.
It is disheartening to see patients refused health service simply due to financial reasons, or to see them confronted by a sign requesting payment first. This is an urgent problem that cannot continue to go unaddressed. The government must take immediate action with all responsible parties in the field of health to make health care free for everybody, or at least affordable for all, according to a person's financial status.
I hope one day that we will see a revolutionary who will assist people by building a cooperative insurance company that helps people by using the people's own money, saving the remaining amount for them later.
Universal health care, through which everyone gets the benefit of free health service, is not too out of reach. We can achieve it, and soon, we will celebrate Free Health Day.
Abdulaziz Aloufi is a first-year Masters in Public Health student at the Rollins School of Public Health from Medina City, Saudi Arabia.
Cartoon by Mariana Hernandez
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