Women's Health Policy - Essay Example

"Women's Health Policy" is a great example of a paper on the health system.  Health care disparity is the difference in health care accessibility that subsists among people, occasioned by varied ethnic, social, or economic factors. For instance, low-income earners in the United States mostly do not have any health care insurance cover compared to the high-income earners who have good insurance covers (Salganicoff, 2007). Thus, the low-income earners succumb to financial problems, hence fail to access the best health care, unlike the high-income earners who are well-insured and receive topnotch health care services. The disproportion in the aforementioned example is what defines healthcare disparity.

            The accessibility to health care among women varies according to a legion of socio-economic factors. These factors give the rationale why some women may face problems in the quest to access health care across the world (Salganicoff, 2007). Firstly, women in underdeveloped and developing countries mostly succumb to diseases because of the dire effects of economic downturns that hit the countries. Due to the financial problems resulting from the poor economic spheres, most women are exposed to risks of series of diseases and still fail to seek medical attention from health facilities

 Secondly, women from communities that are deeply embedded in primitive cultural practices face a social ignominy of having a lower status than men. These communities often disregard women and tag them as minor in power compared to men and consequently denying them vital rights. The women are often left to negligence when they fall sick, which is a prime impediment to women’s accessibility to health care (Nikiema, Haddad & Potvin, 2012). The outcome is usually premature deaths that can easily be controlled if these women could access health care at the right time when they fell sick. However, these communities are mostly replete with uneducated men and women who blindly follow the primordial cultural practices that were set from their historic times.

Thirdly, there are provider shortages that stand as rifts between women and accessibility to health care. The shortage of pediatricians, obstetricians, general doctors, and nurses creates difficulties in getting good health care among women. In most cases, the shortages are occasioned by the maldistribution of health care physicians, where most of them are located in metropolitan counties and creating a dearth of physicians in rural regions. Moreover, the public medical providers also tend to flock to the private sector to earn more income, hence creating a scarcity of health care providers in the public sector.  

Lastly, ethnic and racial segregation is also a factor that contributes to the accessibility of health care among women. Copious information from a series of recent statistical data indicates that most African-American, African, American Indians and Hispanic women are racially segregated in hospitals (Nikiema, Haddad & Potvin, 2012). These four ethnic groups are mostly associated with a higher percentage of health problems than white people. Thus, the outcome is inferiority among women when attempting to seek health care in hospitals for the fear of being segregated.

There is thus evidence that exists that shows health care disparity among women. The rate of racial discrimination is high and escalating by the day in the United States.  The outcome is a disparity that subsists between the whites and other races, occasioned by the financial capabilities. Most whites are high-income earners; hence despise other races especially in the provision of health care (Washington et. Al., 2011). Moreover, poverty is a significant factor that eliminates people from the acquisition of good healthcare. Thus, most women do not receive good medical attention occasioned by this factor, and hence the rich people get the best health care services. Lastly, cultural practices in underdeveloped countries bar women from receiving healthcare, which translates to the creation of a disparity between them and the women in developed countries.

Read More