“The uninsured” is a term that is coined to people who don’t posses any form of insurance who primarily include paperless immigrants, minorities, children and or teenagers without insurance, employees of small businesses, people who belong on the lower part of the social strata and also a significant number of the elderly. In effect, such a group of people suffered a lot in terms of seeking and receiving the health service that is necessary to prolong their lives.
Corollary with this, are the disposition of those patients who initially have a health insurance but experience a significant degree of difficulty in terms of having the insurance company subsidize the treatment and or operation that is necessary for their health condition. Such a problem creates an ethical dilemma on the end of the doctors, patients, insurance providers and also the courts. Initially, insurance is something that is only made available to wealthy Americans.
On the turn of the 20th century, there have been two major changes which took effect in terms of how insurances are disseminated. The rise of the private insurances and the government subsidized insurances has seemed to provide a temporary solution on the problem of inequality in terms of health services. Such an initiative has caused companies to provide insurances to their employees and by 1950’s almost two thirds of the population already have insurance.
Due to the relative availability and accessibility of the population to insurance, some segment of the population were forgotten, hence the uninsured (Jost 1998, p. 106). Initiatives on the part of the government were introduced in order to solve this problem. General welfare programs during the 20th century were also introduced in order to cater to the marginalized. In addition, a New Deal program was also made available to the population living in the rural areas.
On the span of the 20th century, progressive and labor interests asserted the necessity of compulsory national health insurance, but such efforts were hindered by a number of significant and powerful institutions in the country such as various business interests and the medical profession in itself (Jost 1998, p. 106). In relation with this, the issue of the caste system that is very imminent on hospitals is the issue that was tacked by Romano (2002).
There are certain hospitals that are viewed as practicing the so-called boutique medicine wherein they require their patients to pay an annual membership fee in order to gain access to the services of their hospital. However, Lois Snyder, director of the Center for Ethics and Professionalism at the 115,000-member American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine as cited from Romano (2002, p. 5) have reiterated that such ways of some hospitals are certainly against the their manuals. Snyder emphasized that indiscriminate perception should be applied regardless if the patient is insured or uninsured.