Soc 120: Introduction to Ethics & Social Responsibility/Healthcare
Our Right for Good Health
Jason Daniel Kowalczyk
SOC 120: Introduction to Ethics & Social Responsibility
Joe Niehaus
August 15, 2011
A doctor is familiar with something that many others may not be too familiar with, and that is the Hippocratic Oath. If you are to look at said oath, it says nothing about kickbacks from drug companies to push this new prescription. There is nothing about how expensive a treatment is, but what it does talk about caring for others in the Hippocratic Oath. It does specify what a doctor does as something that is done for the benefit of the sick. In 1964, Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, wrote a version of the oath that talks about how a doctor should care for the sick with compassion, humanely, and says nothing about working to get rich off of those who are suffering (Lasagna, 1964). In the United States, there should not be anyone who cannot see a doctor because they are poor; a doctor takes an oath to heal the sick wherever he can, not to heal the sick only if they are rich. If being alive is an inalienable right, as documented by the Declaration of Independence, would it not be common sense that healthcare would also be a right rather than a privilege? The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not make sure that all of its citizens receive proper health coverage. In 2004 lack of coverage is estimated to have caused 18,000 deaths that have been considered unnecessary (Iom.edu, 2004). It is common knowledge that if a parent has an extremely ill child, and refuses to take that child to the doctor, the parent can be charged with neglect. If the child is the healthy one, and her single father is diagnosed with cancer, who will be charged with neglect when he dies for no other reason than he doesn’t have insurance?
Could you imagine being so desperate for health care that you were willing to commit a federal crime in the hopes of going to
Jason Daniel Kowalczyk
SOC 120: Introduction to Ethics & Social Responsibility
Joe Niehaus
August 15, 2011
A doctor is familiar with something that many others may not be too familiar with, and that is the Hippocratic Oath. If you are to look at said oath, it says nothing about kickbacks from drug companies to push this new prescription. There is nothing about how expensive a treatment is, but what it does talk about caring for others in the Hippocratic Oath. It does specify what a doctor does as something that is done for the benefit of the sick. In 1964, Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, wrote a version of the oath that talks about how a doctor should care for the sick with compassion, humanely, and says nothing about working to get rich off of those who are suffering (Lasagna, 1964). In the United States, there should not be anyone who cannot see a doctor because they are poor; a doctor takes an oath to heal the sick wherever he can, not to heal the sick only if they are rich. If being alive is an inalienable right, as documented by the Declaration of Independence, would it not be common sense that healthcare would also be a right rather than a privilege? The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not make sure that all of its citizens receive proper health coverage. In 2004 lack of coverage is estimated to have caused 18,000 deaths that have been considered unnecessary (Iom.edu, 2004). It is common knowledge that if a parent has an extremely ill child, and refuses to take that child to the doctor, the parent can be charged with neglect. If the child is the healthy one, and her single father is diagnosed with cancer, who will be charged with neglect when he dies for no other reason than he doesn’t have insurance?
Could you imagine being so desperate for health care that you were willing to commit a federal crime in the hopes of going to