Beauchamp and Childress’ Four Principles model is one of the commonly used frameworks and offers an extensive consideration of medical ethics issues generally (UK Clinical Ethics Network, n.d.). The Four Principles of the model are overall standards that allow significant room for judgment in specific cases. These principles include non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and beneficence. The principles have been influential in the health area of ethics and are useful in comprehending contemporary approaches to the ethical valuation in health care (Shea, 2020). Thus, this study will investigate the declining trust in the health care system from an ethical position using this model, identifying legal issues, financial issues, and impacts of the problem.
Legal Issues Contributing to the Problem
An electronic data breach is a significant emerging problem with rapidly evolving technology in the Health Care Industry. As the Health Care Providers migrate to using electronic systems and sharing data between networks, systems’ interoperability creates more breaches. According to Page and Fields (2015), laptop theft is a regular type of data breach accounting for twenty-four percent of reported breaches in Hospitals and Health Systems. The desktop computers accounted for sixteen percent of breaches while transferrable gadgets such as smartphones accounted for fourteen percent (Page and Fields, 2015).
The second legal issue contributing to declining trust in the health care system is the False Claim. Some of the various activities associated with the false claim in the health care system include:
In an effort to solve false claims, The False Claim Act was formulated, allowing the prosecution of healthcare providers for various activities leading to the submission of the fraudulent claim (Bishop, 2019).
Financial and Economic Issues Contributing to the Problem
One of the financial issues the Health Care System encountering is the End of Life Care. In the last few years, there has been huge spending on health care. According to The National Academies Press (n.d.), there has been a rise in spending of individuals from $63.8 billion to $831.7 billion in the last 25 to 30 years in healthcare. The United States gross domestic product percentage allocated to health care increased from seven-point one percent to thirteen-point seven percent. The cost of end-of-life care is one of several matters for individuals who see incentives that include cultural, legal, and other factors that may obstruct excellent palliative care. End-of-life care financing can promote or prevent the use of several kinds of services present to dying patients and their families. It can be a painful time for the person and the families involved.
Another issue in the health care system contributing to the trust problem is the increasing salaries or wages. Benefits and salaries are one of the main cost line items for critical care hospitals. Health care institutions have witnessed general wages increase as more physicians are employed. Apart from the increase in salary, health care institutions still have the operating cost and other costs. According to Ellison (2016), as the economy continues to grow, there will be pressure on wage increase and costs on physicians and nursing.
Other issues contributing to the trust decline in the health care system
Apart from the mentioned legal and financial issues, several other issues negatively impact the health care system. One of the issues is the cost of prescriptions, which is among the important critical things occurring in health care institutions. Currently, several people fear going to the doctor for prescriptions due to the mounting cost of medicine. According to Picchni (2016), Segal Consulting forecasted that prescription drug costs for the Americans under sixty-five years would shoot by eleven-point six percent in 2017. Thus, older Americans will not have much of a break due to the continuous rise in drugs (Nearterm, 2018). The prices of drugs are increasing faster than the cost of living or wages in several countries. The issue is compelling for individuals to go without essential medicine and sometimes experience life-threatening issues. The issue is unmanageable even with insurance providers as they claim the expenses are too high. The issue has adverse effects, such as causing the death of a patient and worsening the patient’s condition.
Another major challenge that can be a legal and moral issue is abortion. The matters with planned parenthood have affected several families. Abortion has been applied as a way of controlling birth by individuals, which can result in numerous ethical and moral problems with several health care workers and health care providers facilitating the process. Abortion matter has been associated with various debates from groups involving politics, whether it is right or wrong. The debates surrounding the issue have posed major threats to an individual who need the process due to health complications.
Conclusion
In the contemporary world, many issues in the Health Care institutions have emerged, causing mistrust in the companies. One of the main challenges in these Health Care institutions is the Insurance companies having too much control over them. Doctors are forced to adhere to the Insurances Companies’ policies on how long an individual should wait in the hospital for a particular diagnosis and the need to use a specific list of medications. Thus, if Doctors can have an influence on specific things in hospitals, perhaps the price of medications can reduce instead of increasing. Incidents have occurred where patients are released early from the hospital when properly treated and forced to return back too soon for the same diagnosis raising the costs of health services. Also, the situation where an individual is not assigned a doctor to follow the recovery while in hospital has traumatized patients raising a serious trust issue. Thus, most of the Health Care System issues are caused by too much control of insurance firms on institutions. There is a need to limit insurance companies so that the health care system that controls medical services for the patients.
