Essay On Substandard Care

Martin Luther King Jr. stated that, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” (Munro). Today, the availability and quality of healthcare for everyone is based on the amount of wealth one has. With the creation of websites like gofundme and many others we see the financial burden that is put on so many families with sick ones. It all comes down to wealth, if you have the money to cover extreme medical cost, you will be able to get better, continue on with work and continue making money. However, the people who can’t afford to get better? Those people get worse, eventually affecting their ability to work and bring in money, and in the end, they are getting sicker and poorer.

One problem that many have is simply affording treatment necessary to live with a disease.

On top of this substandard care, they go home to live in poor housing and degraded environments, subjectable to worsening health. Take for example the story of Deamonte Driver, a twelve year old homeless child, who died from an infection from a molar that had spread to his brain. His mother said that at the time he fell ill, the family’s Medicaid coverage had become invalid, but that even on the plan she said it was very difficult to find a dentist. An easily treated problem of an infected tooth could have saved this boy's life but he was unable to find help due to the limitations of his healthcare (Otto). This is just one of the devastating stories that are told because of the unavailability of health care. In 2015, 46% of uninsured adults said that they tried to get coverage but could not because it of the expensive cost. Many people do not have access to coverage through a job, and some people, particularly poor adults in states that did not expand Medicaid, remain ineligible for financial assistance for coverage ("Key Facts about the Uninsured