Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The rising costs of healthcare, the relative value of healthcare and
improving the effectiveness of healthcare delivery are just some of
the factors impacting on healthcare policy globally. Factor into this
context the emergence of new biotechnological interventions like
stem cell therapy and governments are faced with a need to find the
right balance between supporting potentially new cost-cutting
therapies and the concerns of the community over practices that
some people might regard as being unethical. Support for basic
research, incentives for private companies to innovate and regulations
designed to ameliorate community concerns can therefore be seen as
an attempt to bridge the demand for both investment in healthcare
and protection from harm (Gottweis et al., 2009).
2.2.2 Inequalitiesinhealthcare
On average, health outcomes have substantially improved across the
OECD since 1960. Life expectancy has increased, and heart disease,
infant mortality and premature death have decreased (de Looper and
Lafortune, 2009). Yet differences in health outcomes for people by
socio-economic indicators like age, gender, ethnicity, geographical
distribution and income continue to persist within all nations
(de Looper and Lafortune, 2009). Lower socio-economic status
results in worse health outcomes, with people in lower socio-economic
groups having higher rates of disease, poorer quality of health, higher
mortality and more difficulty accessing healthcare services than those
in higher socio-economic groups (de Looper and Lafortune, 2009).
How stem cell technologies will be taken up will also have to be
factored into these concerns around inequalities in health.
Some of the socio-economic barriers around access to healthcare
include: cost of services, availability of providers, excessive waiting
times and distance to providers (de Looper and Lafortune, 2009). In
the first instance, the costs of services are presumed to be met by
either public or private health insurance, sometimes in combination
(de Looper and Lafortune, 2009). In the US though, data shows that
30 per cent of the population under 65 have no health insurance
(de Looper and Lafortune, 2009). The consequences of this include
