Introduction
For homeless people, including drunkards and other socio-economically or health-challenged folks in society, everyone sees a misfit who does not want to work or do things right. To the public, this class of people is plain misfits. No one gives them any chance as possible products of society’s failure in one way or another. Single mother syndrome, unemployment, and several others are personal problems that have a sociological basis. Currently, the focus is on some citizens’ lack of health insurance.
Lack of Health Insurance as a Social Problem
Among healthcare providers, it is common knowledge that many patients do not have health insurance, even Obamacare, which is meant to bring health insurance to everyone’s doorstep. Interestingly these patients share many commonalities. Families with low income are likely to be uninsured; people of color are more likely to be uninsured than their white counterparts. Equally, regarding geographic variation in revenue and the availability of public coverage, people who live in the South and West are more likely to be uninsured. Also, most uninsured have been without coverage for an extended period. (Tolbert et al., 2020). In any society, these events do not happen randomly; instead, they usually follow defined patterns. And this could be seen by observing an individual with related challenges over time. Similarly, observing others alongside could be helpful to gain a better understanding of the problem and, more importantly, find a standard solution that is helpful to any affected person. Putting these observations together to achieve a general picture of why an individual does not have health insurance starts with sociological imagination. Hence, a citizen’s lack of health insurance is a social problem.
The Sociological Implication of Not Having Health Insurance
Repeatedly, healthcare providers will attest to an overwhelming number of patients who default on paying their healthcare bills and do not have a healthcare policy. And those that don’t have healthcare insurance yet again struggle financially. They may belong to the same region or the same race, as noted earlier. Accordingly, an effort to manage or prevent such a problem may be effective if the situation were approached, starting with its sociological imagination. Therefore, the caregiver or healthcare facility should be more interested in society’s failure to provide an enabling environment for the citizens to thrive than the failings of the individual. This can be addressed by providing improved employment opportunities or information about available healthcare policies.
If the public is wrongly exonerated from the problem, efforts to manage or correct equally forgive the people, and the consequence is an ineffective solution. This underscores the need to view individual challenges in the light of public actions or inactions. Aside from the listed problems, many individuals’ social and economic failings, including health cases, are wrongly perceived and left as such.
Impact of Lack of Health Insurance on Healthcare Delivery
The inability of patients to pay for their healthcare needs is a genuine concern to the healthcare facility. For one, the facility can no longer raise revenue to sustain the place. If this happens consistently, it may not yet be able to justify the possession of an active license since uninsured people are unlikely to receive Medicare and are more likely to have health issues. (Healthy People 2020) And closing the shop may be the logical consequence for the clinic.
Conclusion
Essentially, when the healthcare provider realizes that the patient’s challenge is traceable to society, they can secure the services of social workers to bridge the gap by providing resources to meet the patient’s needs. Accordingly, these patients that may have been tagged irresponsible and condemned to ill health eventually receive healthcare and freedom from ill health. Making efforts to see individuals failing in a sociological sense is truly a win-win.
Individuals’ inclinations and what they do are always reflections of what society offers. Lacking this understanding is the usual cause of conflict and the inability of administrators, teachers, leaders, managers, and salespeople, including caregivers, to give or get the best when dealing with people within their sphere of influence. Since the nursing profession is typically social, it may be required that the nursing professional be versed in employing sociological imagination in confronting related personal challenges in the workplace.
References
Healthy People (2020). Access to health services
Tolbert, J., Orgera, K., & Damico, A. (2020). Key facts about the uninsured population
https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue–brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/
