Nowadays, the healthcare system is one of the most successful business areas. Ideally, the country’s government should be responsible for providing citizens with equal healthcare opportunities. However, the public healthcare level is much lower than in private clinics, where people pay vast amounts of money to get professional treatment. Addressing this ethical issue, many believe that healthcare should be free for everyone. This change in the healthcare system has both positive and negative aspects related to treatment quality.
Free health care has a positive impact on the economy of the country. According to practical research, free healthcare increases people’s capability and allows them to work more productively (Allegri et al., 2020). Thus, by having free access to healthcare services, people can have their diseases treated in time. As a result, the general efficiency of the people’s work directly correlates with their health. The second positive aspect of free healthcare is that more people can consult high-quality doctors without saving money beforehand. Therefore, many illnesses’ symptoms can be recognized and treated quickly (Ridde & Samb, 2018). Thus, the total illness prevention level will increase, and many lives will be saved.
However, free healthcare also has negative implications for both patients and the government. Free healthcare makes the medical organization’s competition unnecessary and may decrease the motivation to develop the quality of the treatment services (Bah et al., 2019).
Therefore, without considering the service improvements necessary, medical providers can degrade the quality of treatment. Thus, many people can fall victims to medication mistakes, which can severely harm their health. To prevent this problem, the government should provide medical organizations with enough money for service development. This leads to the second disadvantage of free healthcare, which is the enormous governmental budget expenses. The other institutions’ budgeting can be severely damaged because of free healthcare (Allegri et al., 2020). The government should allocate money to healthcare, trying to balance all the spheres rationally.
Free healthcare has both positive and negative implications for treatment quality. While changing the inequity in the healthcare system for the better, such modifications can lead to severe problems with the governmental budget distribution and treatment quality. Each country’s government should accurately analyze the free healthcare perspectives and possible drawbacks to develop the individual strategy of improving citizens’ wellbeing. When appropriately planned, free healthcare programs’ advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
References
Allegri, M., Hillebrecht, M., Kuunibe, N., Lohmann, J., Nguyen, H., & Tougri, G. (2020). What happens when performance‐based financing meets free healthcare? Evidence from an interrupted time‐series analysis. Health Policy and Planning, 35(8), 906–917. Web.
Bah, A., Hann, K., Jalloh, M., James, P., Sevalie, S., & Shmueli, A. (2019). Impact of the free healthcare initiative on wealth-related inequity in the utilization of maternal & child health services in Sierra Leone. BMC Health Services Research, 19(352), 2–15. Web.
Ridde, V., & Samb, O. (2018). The impact of free healthcare on women’s capability: A qualitative study in rural Burkina Faso. Social Science & Medicine, 197, 9–16. Web.