Life and Death Inequality
Global health trends have been steadily improving for some time. Breakthroughs in medicine and surgical techniques have improved the quality of healthcare but not everyone reaps the benefits. Contrary to popular belief, the United States, which is a beacon for advanced health care, suffers from serious health care inequality.
A recent MIT study has exposed the magnitude of this inequality. The research showed that the wealthiest 1% in America has enjoyed an improved life expectancy by 15 years in comparison to the poorest 1%. For a country that welcomes millions of people every year for medical reasons, to have such a huge disparity is a serious cause for concern. Unfortunately this problem is only getting worse. In the last 15 years the wealthiest segment of society has seen an increase in life expectancy by two years for men and three for women. In contrast to this trend, the poorest segment of society has seen virtually no improvement. Such poor figures are very rarely seen in modern society especially in a developed country like the United States. To put things into context, the last time such trends were experienced was during the AIDS epidemic in Africa and the downfall of communism in Russia. With such glaring inequality the political environment is ripe with discussion on closing this gap yet despite all this attention public policy is moving towards a state that perpetuates this inequality. The current administration is working towards undoing the Affordable Care Act which will deprive 23 million Americans of health insurance. As a nation America spearheads multiple efforts abroad to improve access to healthcare yet within its own borders there is such immense inequality. As someone who has always marveled at the medical innovation that occurs in America it astonishes me to discover the shocking state of health care inequality here and it seems that the current polarized political state will do little to correct this inequality.
Some argue that inequality is unavoidable within a capitalistic society and though there is economic justifications to such arguments there must be a greater effort by policy makers to reduce the magnitude of this inequality. Ideally no one should be priced out from healthcare and therefore there should be social structures and frameworks in place to avoid this from happening.