Introduction
Free healthcare means everyone has access to the medical treatment they require anytime they need it, free from financial strain. A significant part of the world’s population does not now have access to the necessary healthcare. Consequently, due to medical expenses, millions of individuals are forced into extreme poverty every year, and the situation needs to be changed. Vital, patient-centered primary healthcare prioritizes preventing and curing disease and illness and enhancing overall well-being and quality of life should be the foundation of universal health coverage.
Discussion
Governments and health departments may help empower residents and communities to take charge of their well-being and encourage innovative and financially sustainable healthcare by promoting mental and physical health and managing medical literacy. Free health promotion initiatives are the most efficient and long-lasting ways to guarantee healthy lifestyles and lower the dangers of having poor mental and physical well-being (Shilton and Barry 93). Health promotion, primary prevention, and care must be actively pursued as fundamental parts of an efficient system if all people live healthy lives and reach their full potential. Enhancing people’s health conditions and ensuring their social well-being throughout their lives can be accomplished by strengthening health promotion within primary care and allowing access to the universal free system of medical services.
There is proof that ensuring everyone has access to healthcare can improve general population health. For instance, academics asserted that having universal healthcare would not only be advantageous for the United States but would have also strengthened public health during the pandemic (Riley 5). They stressed how the pandemic raised both the demand for healthcare and the rate of unemployment, which led to many people losing their health insurance precisely when they needed it most. Similar studies found that medical costs in specific regions might be used to track the COVID-19 outbreak due to the country’s universal healthcare system. It greatly simplified monitoring and controlled the progress of the disease. Therefore, a free healthcare system can also benefit the state during emergencies that put the life of the citizens at risk.
Although most countries’ healthcare benefits packages are relatively comprehensive in theory, to guarantee access to healthcare, there must be enough services offered in enough numbers and of acceptable quality. Individuals who can afford this could seek treatment in an alternative private sector when facilities are not provided in adequate quantities (D’Apice 10). Professionals cautioned that the rise of voluntary and workplace health insurance could aggravate disparities in access to healthcare, primarily if the programs are utilized by those who can afford them, typically people in better work conditions (Baeten 46). There is a chance that public support for initiatives to reduce healthcare costs or shorten wait times for the entire population will decline. In addition, many countries worldwide have emphasized the unbalanced distribution of health care among urban and rural areas. Therefore, to incorporate free healthcare, many social issues in the state’s policies must be resolved first to provide equal opportunities for people.
Conclusion
Therefore, the concept of universal free healthcare benefits the individuals and the countries that take such a strategy. The approach increases the overall well-being and healthy lifestyle application due to the affordability of required both physical and mental treatment. Additionally, the system has been utilized to decrease COVID-19’s spread and its detrimental effects on the public’s health and economy. However, the limitation appears in the problem of unbalanced governmental support, which provokes unequal conditions among citizens.
Works Cited
Baeten, Rita, et al. Inequalities in access to healthcare. A study of national policies, European Social Policy Network, European Commission, 2018.
D’Apice Clelia et al. “A realist synthesis of staff-based primary health care interventions addressing universal health coverage.” Journal of Global Health, 14 May 2022, pp.1-16. Web.
Riley, Anna. “The possibility of universal health coverage in the United States.” UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal, vol. 14 no. 1, 2022, pp. 1-13. Web.
Shilton Trevor and Margaret M. Barry. “The critical role of health promotion for effective universal health coverage.” Global Health Promotion, vol. 3 no. 1, 2022 pp. 92-95.