Assignment: CAPS 401 Week 5 Cultural and Ethical Perspective of Healthcare Inequality in the United States

Compose a focused paper that explains and describes your healthcare issue or topic from a cultural and ethical perspective of inquiry. (You will cover two perspectives in one paper.)

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Form and answer two levels of research questions for each inquiry to address your chosen topic.

Choose a “Level 1 Research Question/Writing Prompt” from both of the lists below to answer in the paper.

Compose a “Level 2 Research Question/Writing Prompt” for each kind of inquiry that provides detail, specificity, and focus to your inquiry, research, and writing.

State your research questions in your paper’s introduction.

Form the body of your paper by answering each research question and support your assertions with evidence (research).

In the conclusion of the paper, briefly review the issues, research questions, answers, and insights.

Level 1 Research Questions/Writing Prompts

ETHICAL Perspective of Inquiry

What laws govern or pertain to the issue?

What ethical obstacles affect how the medical community addresses the issue?

How do ethical theories apply to the issue?

How do money, power, and control matters relate to the issue and its treatment?

Level 1 Research Questions/Writing Prompts

CULTURAL Perspective of Inquiry

Which cultural values and/or norms influence the issue?

How is the issue addressed differently in varying cultural contexts and situations?

Which cultures or societies are most affected by the issue? Why?

Which cultural traditions affect the treatment(s)?

Your paper must be five pages in length and reference four to six scholarly, peer-reviewed resources. Be sure to follow current APA Style (e.g., spacing, font, headers, titles, abstracts, page numbering).

Refer to the rubric for evaluation details and to assist in preparing the paper.

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A Cultural and Ethical Perspective of Healthcare Inequality in the United States

The cultural and ethical concerns of healthcare inequality are among the most challenging issues faced by millions of Americans today in the United States. Under these circumstances, this paper performs an in-depth analysis of cultural and ethical dimensions of healthcare inequality in search of a greater understanding of the phenomenon and possible ways of improvement. These research questions will guide the inquiry on the ethical perspective: What ethical barriers hinder the medical community’s approach to the given issue? What role do the moral theories of utilitarianism and fair equality of opportunity play in healthcare decisions, especially those related to resource distribution? Conversely, from a cultural viewpoint, the questions are: Which values and norms of culture, at large, contribute to this inequality in healthcare? How is healthcare disparity in the United States fashioned through the interaction of socioeconomic and geographical factors among the different cultural groups?
Ethical Perspective
Level 1: Ethical Obstacles in Addressing Healthcare Inequality
The medical fraternity confronts several ethical challenges to end healthcare inequality in the United States. Mainly, it encounters the challenge of reconciling universal access to care with effective and efficient use of limited resources (Darrudi et al., 2022). The situation is worsened by the American healthcare system being privately driven and thus for profit-making at the expense of fair healthcare access, as argued by Teisberg et al. (2020). These conflicting priorities bear a heavy toll on how healthcare equality is realized in ethical terms.
The second ethical issue is between the public and individuals’ rights and freedoms. Kooli (2021) has hypothesized that therein was this progression, with COVID-19 fully entailing that individual decisions regarding taking vaccines and wearing face masks became an even more salient aspect of most people’s social existences. In these winding ethical issues, contemporary physicians are faced with minimizing health disparities. This concern is also a source of conflict between individual choice and achieving public health goals involved in population-level risk factor reduction for improving health.
Other ethical issues evident from the unfair distribution of healthcare include the principles of autonomy and informed consent coupled with health literacy. As Wojtowicz et al. (2020) state, underexposure sometimes prevents a person with poor literacy standards from gaining the necessary knowledge and information to help them make health-related decisions. It also poses several ethical issues regarding healthcare professionals’ role in ensuring their patients get enough info concerning their illnesses and all related treatment options.
Moral concerns regarding equality and health disparity are also based on health justice. According to Pauly et al. (2021), as far as providers are concerned, problems about the equitable allocation of scant resources are often not far-fetched, especially where the facility or the institution’s clients are cut across the income bracket. Ongoing differences in socioeconomic status may produce unethical concerns about who should be served first based on need or ability to pay.
Level 2: Influence of Ethical Theories on Resource Allocation
Mabaquiao (2021) helps to further contextualize the ethical problem associated with resource allocation in healthcare by contrasting the two most influential moral theories: consequentialism and fair equality of opportunity (FEOP). Kantianism looks to justify actions that will benefit most people, explaining why most resources are spent on treatment that helps the majority. However, it will be to the disadvantage of the minority groups or the people with some of the very uncommon ailments. On the other hand, FEOP emphasizes the need for fair treatment of all people in the country regardless of their financial background or any other cultural aspects.
Policymakers and healthcare providers encounter major challenges while implementing and serving these ethical theories when making healthcare resource allocation decisions. Vearrier and Henderson (2021) articulate another potential shortcoming of such a utilitarian approach: the tendency to subsidize the most prevalent diseases, which might not benefit people with rare diseases. On the other hand, the effective implementation of the means-end operation properties can skew the use of resources to afford all people highly valuable treatments, detrimenting their health.
These ethical challenges call for a middle ground that aims to achieve both the outcome that benefits the most significant number of people in society and those that provide fair and equal treatment for all patients. It might include adopting a ‘proportionate universalism’ model where equality in healthcare services is observable but where equitable resources are channeled towards the more deprived areas, as Gkiouleka et al. (2023) proposed. It is a valuable way to resolve the ethical imperatives of efficiency and equity in health service delivery.
Another theory of ethical resource allocation is “accountability for reasonableness,” as put forward by Wagner et al. (2019). Under this provision, decision-making tends to be open, relevant, and adjustable, allowing resource allocation credibility and reasonableness to be available for all. With such frameworks in place, healthcare systems might try to answer questions related to inequity or even unethical use of resources.

Cultural Perspective
Level 1: Cultural Values and Norms Influencing Healthcare Inequality
Culture plays a huge role in healthcare disparities in the United States. According to Varkey (2020), Americans’ freedom and right to individualism can hinder the concept of universal health care as a human right. Such cultural beliefs affect the perceptions of the people and the authorities as much as the right to healthcare and how the community is protected to make personal decisions.
Nonetheless, the perception of health status, attitude to health, health-seeking behavior, and view on formal healthcare vary considerably across ethnic groups in the United States. Tiruneh et al. (2024) articulate that such differences can significantly influence healthcare consumption and outcomes. The health gap may widen, for instance, because some ethnic groups are not as likely to receive preventive health care or because they tend to go more toward traditional medicine rather than modern medicine.
Culture may further influence self-rated health through differences in how various groups perceive and use healthcare. As per Tiruneh et al. (2024), cultural attitudes toward health focus on prevention rather than disease treatment. Consequently, changing the viewpoint requires developing efficient strategies to reduce healthcare inequalities, which depends on realizing these features of society.
Level 2: Socioeconomic and Geographical Factors Contributing to Healthcare Disparities
Socioeconomic and geographical factors conspire to widen healthcare disparities among the diversity of United States cultural groups. Zhu et al. (2024) focus primarily on China, giving insights that reverberate within the United States. Their study illustrates the need for resource allocation based on population needs rather than only geography or economics. The United States also has similar divides among urban and rural areas and wealthy and poor community clusters.
Geographical disparities in access to care are particularly acute in the country, where hospital closures and a lack of doctors have created what many now describe as “healthcare deserts” (Hammond et al., 2022). These areas are characterized by a high concentration of elderly and low-income populations that magnify the impacts of limited healthcare access for vulnerable populations. On the other hand, rural-urban differences exist in allocating medical resources.
Socioeconomic factors interrelate with inequities in healthcare. Recent statistics show that low-income individuals usually have no insurance, or their pocket expenses are too high, leading to care being deferred or not received (Kim et al., 2023). Moreover, they have less control over their work schedule, which makes visiting doctors or engaging in routine health-promoting behaviors harder. Very often, these economic barriers overlap with cultural influences.
It is vital to comprehend that these factors do not homogeneously affect cultural groups’ social settings. For instance, Fisher et al. (2021) distinguished between universal-based and targeted-based health equity policy implementation to create different impacts across populations. In their quest to understand how policy interventions universally affect general health outcomes, the researchers found that frequently targeted interventions are needed to address the particular inequalities facing marginalized groups.
Conclusion
Health disparity in America is a multi-dimensional social problem ingrained with cultural and ethical concerns. Ethical issues within the medical industry created the conflict between practical and egalitarian distribution theories. Research has shown that inequality in access to health care among demographics exists because of cultural and normative beliefs that sometimes combine with economic and geographical factors. These inequalities can be addressed by implementing sophisticated, holistic, culturally sensitive, and ethical responses. Some ways through which the healthcare system can promote healthcare equity is to give fair treatment across the population while still recognizing and celebrating cultural differences through proportionate universalism, engaging the communities, and integrated care. Policymakers are in a dilemma because they have to ensure they make morally right decisions and that the health policies they implement are working efficiently. To solve such issues, they should identify new strategies for understanding and resolving the multifactorial cultural, ethical, and socioeconomic processes underlying healthcare inequities.

References
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Fisher, M., Harris, P., Freeman, T., Mackean, T., George, E., Friel, S., & Baum, F. (2021). Implementing universal and targeted policies for health equity: Lessons from Australia. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 11(10). https://doi.org/10.34172/ijhpm.2021.157
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