U.S. Government Sponsored Health Care

The main reason the source of health-care provision has become so important in the U.S. recently is that its costs have since 1970 risen faster than the ability of either growth of the economy in general and the power to pay of individuals in particular. American health care has been described as a "$1 trillion monster" in which more than 16 percent of the population lacks medical insurance and in which rising expenses outpace inflation dramatically. Health care accounted for six percent of gross national product (gross domestic product) in 1971 but fourteen percent in 1996.

Increasing medical costs care have been attributed to advances in medical technology and knowledge that have made better medical interventions possible--as well as seductive and more expensive. Gaylin cites the invention of the electronic fetal monitor in the 1970s as an example, noting that after its appearance about one-third of all hospital births are by Caesarean because of the EFM's standard use in delivery rooms as a device for measuring increased fetal heartbeat during labor, hence in

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e a certain priority, if not absolute weight, to the former." Elsewhere, he favors "redress[ing] the bias of contingencies in the direction of equality" and "primary goods," or "basic rights and liberties, institutional opportunities, and prerogatives of office and position, along with income and wealth . . . [and] social bases of self-respect." What this comes down to is that the institutions of civil society are meant to provide compensation, including but not limited to free health care, for those who lack the resources to provide for themselves. Rawls avoids discussing institutional details, instead focusing on the principle that the advantaged cannot be "permitted to acquire benefits in ways that do not contribute to the welfare of others." According to Pogge, "Rawls simply leaves medical needs aside." But, he adds, Rawls's concepts are relevant: No group can be excluded wholesale from any available medical procedures, medications, and other health-relevant goods. There are three exceptions . . . (1) inability or unwillingness to pay the access price, (2) medical unsuitability (as when the procedure would be unnecessary or ineffective), or (3) age . . . because it does not . . . affect persons' lifetime . . . med
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Approximate Word count = 1867
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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