Personal Values Assessment
*I believe every person has the right to access health/mental health care regardless of a person’s ability to pay.
*I value family in its many shapes and forms.
*I believe no one has the right to impose their religious/spiritual beliefs on another person or to demean others for their religious/spiritual beliefs.
I feel one of the biggest issues facing the people of the United States is affordable and decent health/mental health care. I researched health care in the United States, and found an article in The Washington Post titled, “Once again, U.S. has most expensive, least effective health care system in survey.” Some of the problems with the health care system are lack of primary care physicians; lack of access to primary care especially for the poor; low income patients who skip needed care, do no fill their prescriptions or schedule needed tests because of the cost; and deaths resulting from conditions which could have been controlled such as high blood pressure (Bernstein, 2014).
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In my experience as a social worker, this is especially true for older adults and senior citizens. In the past few weeks, I have been working with a resident in the independent living area of the facility where I work. She is living on a fixed income, and is unable to pay the co-pays for her medications. She feels the only solution to this problem is to forgo all of her medications except her insulin. I have made several phone calls, spoke with the social worker for the county service agency, and I have researched prescription plans, and I have not been able to find a program which will help her with the co-pays. This is an issue which needs to be addressed on social/collective level, and, unfortunately, it is not getting addressed because I am sure she is not the only person who feels they only way out is to stop taking her