The United States of America does not have compulsory health insurance for the entire population, unlike, for example, the European Union. Many unprotected social sectors of the population cannot afford insurance because of its high cost and live without it. In case of illness, this person may not have enough money for treatment and cannot rely on insurance from the state. The issue of insurance is both societal and personal as it affects the individual interests in obtaining quality medical care from the clinics and the doctors, whose coherence of work also suffers.
Despite the Government’s attempts to reform the healthcare system, the health insurance problem remains. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that lacks universal health coverage (Crowley et al., 2020). This fact forces people to look for sources of insurance in the form of an employer or a company in which a person works. Still, socially vulnerable segments of the population are forced to live without guarantees of receiving paid treatment. This problem is often considered an individual problem as it concerns human health and the proper functioning of the body. In general, it can be said that the issue is more uncommon than the public one, as it directly affects the individual, but the global nature of the topic is also difficult to deny. Thus, the importance of health insurance in the U.S. is high and affects the interests of a person forced to deal with their health problems.
The inaccessibility of social health insurance in the U.S. to some segments of the population is a general global problem affecting everyone in the country. However, sociological imagination can be used to understand better the feelings of people who cannot afford high-quality health care. For example, by studying human thoughts in greater depth, one can understand the true causes of a person’s lack of work and not conclude the existence of laziness or the desire to idle. Only some people can independently ensure access to high-quality and affordable care, ultimately leading to serious health problems without proper treatment (Crowley et al., 2020). Another major social issue is unemployment. Unemployed persons are in unprotected states, which also applies to health insurance, which is not provided to every citizen by the State. The social causes of the lack of insurance coverage are insufficient wages to cover the cost of quality health care, leading some people to take out the cheapest insurance. Thus, personal insurance problems are directly related to more significant social issues such as insufficient wages and unemployment.
Regarding the impact of social insurance on medicine, the social imagination of healthcare workers and patients can help social scientists find the key. It can be concluded from the above that affordability of coverage is the main reason some segments of the population are still uninsured (Crowley et al., 2020). This factor directly affects the field of medicine and its employees, where there may be no fixed price for services, and the person may not suspect how much treatment he should expect. Existing stereotypes that show that poorly insured people are lazy and unemployed are a myth when applied to the sociological imagination. Going beyond social thinking, one can understand that, for example, a person has family circumstances that prevent him from finding a suitable job. In this way, if health professionals begin to go beyond the standard imagination, they will be able to see the need for public insurance.
In conclusion, the lack of access to health insurance is a social problem affecting individuals and large population groups. Personal issues lie in the desire of each person to receive quality services, but the possibility of realizing this desire may be related to the problem of unemployment. The lack of wages to cover quality treatment is also a cause of discontent and affects the regularity of doctors’ visits. Thus, the sociological imagination can help a person to go beyond the standard framework of thinking and understand the essence of the need for general insurance, relying on the individual’s problems.
Reference
Crowley, R., Daniel, H., Cooney, T. G., Engel, L. S. (2020). Envisioning a better U.S. health care system for all: Coverage and cost of care. Annals of Internal Medicine, 172(2 Suppl), S7–S32. Web.