The debate on the subject of healthcare privatization has been relevant over the past years due to several reasons. On the one hand, healthcare privatization might guarantee a more individual and qualified approach to the patients’ treatment. On the other hand, however, public health representatives examine how the healthcare prevention system would exist in the privatized market. For this reason, people have now fallen into the two major categories, where some of them support privatization, and others prove the government to be the only way of proper healthcare. To give an evaluation of the given discussion, it is necessary to examine each aspect of the issue.
First of all, one should dwell upon the positive aspects of privatization. The major benefit of private healthcare is the quality of care provided for the patients (“What are the benefits of private health insurance?” 2018). Medical specialists who work for private facilities are more interested in quality patient care, as they constitute a part of a big medical market. Hence, their goal is to engage with potential clients in the best manner possible.
Another major advantage of healthcare is the higher number of healthcare facilities and thus, on-time care. The governmental healthcare system has a limited amount of financial support when it comes to the number of establishments and rooms. However, in the private system people would not have to wait to get medical help, because the variety of medical facilities would be impressive in terms of specializations and patients’ financial status.
Generally, private healthcare facilities fall into six categories according to their specialty: urgent care facilities, nursing homes, orthopedic rehabilitation, and addiction centers, hospice homes, and ambulatory surgical facilities (Healthcare Business Today, 2019). Thus, all groups of people would have qualified and equal access to healthcare to the extent possible in a capitalistic society.
Despite the benefits described above, healthcare privatization does not concern other significant aspects of the public system. First of all, while governmental facilities all have a fixed amount of financial support given every year, the network of private facilities depends on the grants. Grant, i.e. the amount of money given for sustaining a particular project, is given either by private companies or the federal establishments based on applications competition (Madden, 2017). Thus, people who get insurance in a certain establishment are at risk of having issues due to the grant failure.
Secondly, the government has the absolute advantage of having control over the country’s population. Hence, in case of a medical emergency, the government has the right to mobilize the population or make immediate decisions concerning people’s lifestyles. Moreover, the public health sector has the opportunity to track the numbers of residents affected by a certain disease. The information is collected in one place, which makes it easier to report the statistics to the federal representatives. In the case of privatization, however, the data may differ greatly according to the source, creating panic and confusion among the population.
Taking everything into consideration, it may be concluded that the discussion expressing the support for the government-based public healthcare system is properly justified and analyzed. The major federal benefit is the ability to consolidate both statistical data and people to combat health issues. However, the question that remains relevant is how government can get back the trust and respect of its people.
References
Healthcare Business Today. (2019). Six types of private healthcare facilities. Web.
Madden, S. (2017). Sourcing private and public grants for your practice. Web.
What are the benefits of private health insurance? (2018). Web.