Medical Care

Abstract

The United States is the only industrialized democracy that does not define access to healthcare as a right and a government responsibility and therefore does not provide universal healthcare coverage. Instead, access to healthcare is treated as a commodity to be purchased by those who are able to pay or as a partially subsidized benefit of employment in a system that is increasingly dominated by for-profit insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and corporate medical providers. The burdens of this unjust system fall most heavily on low-income people and members of racial and ethnic minority groups. This chapter addresses social injustice in medical care in the United States and what needs to be done to address this injustice. A text box describes single-payer healthcare. A second text box describes approaches to educating medical students about racism.