Healthcare Access among the Rich and the Poor
The social model of heath determinants postulates that an individual’s health is a result of biomedical, behavioral and social factors in the society. A person interaction with these factors determines his overall health status. The social model identifies social and structural determinants of health as major influences of human wellbeing. Such determinants include income, education, occupation, social class; taxation policies, the economy and politics.
The social health model shows a direct relationship between someone’s health and both the structural and social determinants. A person with access to high income, good occupation, social class and facing a good economy has better health than one who faces the opposite. Good health is a right that every individual should enjoy. Making it expensive locks out the poor. This means that most disadvantaged people in the society will not access better healthcare. According to Barkway (2009), a person’s health is directly proportional to his income. This means that the disadvantaged people in the society have little or no access to better healthcare. This is because the quality of healthcare and ease of access get better as one climbs up the income and social ladder.
External factors such as income, level of education, gender and class shows that the government should examine and include a broader sense of health in its policies. The establishment of friendly environmental conditions such as favorable taxes, employment and affordable health institutions is important. Professionals in the medical field ought to be reformers by agitating the government to create a friendly social environment so that they do not keep on treating and sending the patients back to the same social environment (Nurok & Henckes 2009, pg 508).
Reference List
Barkway, P. (2009). Psychology for health professionals, Sydney: New York: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier.
Nurok, M. & Henckes, N. (2009). Between professional values and the social evaluation of patients: the fluctuating economy of pre-hospital emergency work, Social Science & Medicine, vol. 68, pp. 504-510.
