Free health care means citizens of a particular country or region receive medical care freely or at a very minimal cost. These costs are incurred by the local government, which collects the funds through taxes from its citizens. It means that the services are not entirely free, but citizens pay for them indirectly. The end goal of free health care is to provide residents, regardless of whether they can afford it, with health services and the means to access them (NewDick, 2006, p.1965). Free health care has several advantages and disadvantages, which are discussed below.
The first advantage of free healthcare is increased access to health services and facilities, usually associated with free or at a very minimal cost. The governments have subsidized the health sector by providing resources like health facilities, and medicine and offering of health services to the citizens (Acharya and Kumar, 2012, p. 255). This has enabled access across all regions, even in the most remote areas, these services are available.
With this type of improved healthcare, seeing a doctor has become very easy and affordable, increasing the number of times people visit doctors. This has dramatically improved the health of citizens as it has eliminated illnesses related to avoiding doctors due to their high costs of treatment (Frist, 2005, p. 270). Children can lead a healthy life and contribute to economic development due to the health incentives available. Also, the availability of free and cheap medicine at health centers has greatly improved the health status of citizens.
Free healthcare eliminates the need for companies to compete for money. The free-market systems target the wealthy to provide health services, neglecting the poor, the more significant percentage of the population (Acharya and Kumar, 2012, p. 256). Here, the focus is on the number of patients of patients served rather than the quality of services provided. Free health care focuses on providing quality health services regardless of how much one has, thereby eliminating competition.
On the other hand, a free healthcare system caters to everybody, but if not planned well can be stressful for doctors and patients. Understaffing of doctors and health providers can lead to low-quality services. An increase in the number of patients needing attention makes doctors work on busy schedules, shifting their goal to attending to huge numbers of patients rather than properly treating them, resulting in the quality of services significantly decreasing (Kirchhoff et al., 2012, p.5966). Also, there is a possibility of a shortage of medicines due to the increased demand, which most often is not reciprocated with supply, thus adding to the declining quality of services. Most importantly, the ratio of doctors to patients is paramount when planning such health programs.
Due to the availability of free healthcare services, people tend to be careless and ignorant about their health. Rather than focusing on keeping fit and taking precautions, people lead unhealthy lifestyles because they have access to healthcare (Frist, 2005, p. 268). This has posed a major challenge to the health sector because there has been a rise in chronic and infectious diseases, which could have been avoided by simply citizens taking precautions.
Health care program takes around 30% of the country’s budget to provide free medicine, labor force, and other costs of associated parties, which is a considerable proportion to give freely. In return, this weight may be felt on citizens by the government increasing the taxes or neglecting other sectors like education to cater for the same (Frist, 2005, p. 269) When most of a country’s budget only goes to the health sector, it calls for debt acquisition to provide for other sectors, which places a country’s economy on the verge of collapsing.
In conclusion, free health care has been a major drive in improving the health of citizens. Governments have been providing the necessary incentives to achieve this goal. The major challenge facing this program is that citizens have become reluctant about their health, neglecting to take precautions that keep them safe from contracting diseases, pushing the government to dig more to cater for the same.
References
Acharya and Kumar V., 2012. Mobile broadband-based healthcare management: advantages, issues and challenges. International Journal of Computers in Healthcare, 1(3), pp.254 – 268.
Bataineh, H., Devlin, R. and Barham, V., 2019. Unmet health care and health care utilization. Health Economics, 28(4), pp.529-542.
First, W.H., 2005. Health care in the 21st century. New England Journal of Medicine, 352(3), pp.267-272.
Kirchhoff A.C., Lyles, Fluchel, M., Wright, J. and Leisenring, W., 2012. Limitations in health care access and utilization among long‐term survivors of adolescent and young adult cancer. Cancer, 118(23), pp.5964-5972.
Newdick, C., 2006. Citizenship, free movement and health care: cementing individual rights by corroding social solidarity. Common Market L. Rev., 43, p.1645.
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