Getting There From Here By Atul Gawande Analysis

The Equality of Universality

The United States enacts the archetypal form of capitalism. The free market based society has benefits, but the U.S.’s obstinacy with the system, such as with healthcare, is its downfall. Atul Gawande in “Getting There From Here” discusses that although other industrialist nations have embraced universal healthcare, Americans, especially during the Regan and Thatcher era, still associate it with communism: “Yet wherever the prospect of universal health insurance has been considered, it has been widely attacked as a Bolshevik fantasy—a coercive system to be imposed upon people by benighted socialist master planers” (Gawande, 2). In order to understand why the U.S. has not transitioned into a single-payer healthcare

James Pfeiffer and Rachel Chapman in “Anthropological Perspectives on Structural Adjustment and Public Health” explicates how [SAPs] encourages neoliberalism: “[SAPs] are the practical tools used by [IFIs] at country level to promote the market fundamentalism that constitutes the core of neoliberalism” (Pfeiffer and Chapman, 150). The thought process behind SAPs is by moving away from Keynesian theory, which is where government helps all forms of economic distress, and towards trickle down theory, which entails removing economic regulation, the economy will grow and benefits will eventually “trickle down” to lower income families (Pfeiffer and Chapman, 151). It is a long-term capitalistic strategy that many oppose because it is harmful to lower income families: “Critics of SAPs hypothesize a number of pathways through which adjustment policies can harm public health including cuts to basic public sector health care services…” (Pfeiffer and Chapman, 152). The U.S.’s economic structure favors the wealthy, and in regards to healthcare, private insurance favors the healthy, which are typically higher income

Light in “Introduction: Ironies of Success” examines how health and capitalism are interwoven in the U.S.: “the professionally driven health care system was a capitalist’s dream” (Light, 12). Medical monopolies came into formation to stop the decrease in medical salaries due to the increase in medical professionals. Elitist medical professionals marginalized alternative medical doctors and midwives and began prioritizing developing new medical technology over patients being able to afford medical care. In conjunction, private insurance companies offer low premiums for low-risk patients so that they are less likely to have to pay for their clients’ medical needs. This means that non-profit insurances, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield, endure more high-risk patients: “Risk-related private insurance left the Blues with an ever higher-risk profile left in their community-rated pools” (Light, 14). The disproportion of risk-based clients exhibits how the economy supports privatization over universalism.

Beatrix Hoffman in “Health Care Reform and Social Movements in the United States” explains that universal healthcare will stop the fragmentation of the medical field and the disunification of social grassroots movements: ”Only universal coverage would ensure that patients with different diseases and conditions would not be pitted against each other” (Hoffman, 82). By promoting a free market society, the nation becomes a feeding ground for greed and health