Questions and Answers
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Why is the U.S. health care market referred to as “imperfect”?
Firstly, the United States lacks a market price for healthcare services; it lacks feedback mechanisms that can show the value of the resources that were used to provide services to allow the setting of a standard price for healthcare services (Costello, 2020). Secondly, patients in the United States are insured by third-party payers who are responsible for their medical bills. Lastly, the healthcare services offered by various healthcare facilities are significantly different from one another; that is, the healthcare services in the United States meet the definition of a heterogeneous product.
Briefly describe the concepts of market justice and social justice. In what way do the two principles complement each other, and in what way do they conflict in the U.S. system of health care delivery?
According to market justice, health care is a commercial good provided in a free-market condition (Costello, 2020). It holds that businesses equitably allocate healthcare resources and that the ability of people to pay determines healthcare service distribution and access. Social justice takes health care as a social resource that everyone is assured of. It believes that the government is competent in allocating healthcare resources equitably, thus emphasizes full government involvement in the distribution, allocation, and ensuring access to healthcare resources. Healthcare services are a basic right, and all citizens should have equal access, and their ability to pay is not significant.
Often, market justice and social justice complement one another when private or employers pay for healthcare insurance for the individuals mostly the middle-incomes citizens (market justice) and when government initiatives such as Medicaid and Medicare cover the healthcare expenses of the marginalized, the elders and compensates the injured in their workplaces (social justice). The covered populations (both by private and government coverage) can access care by private practitioners and in private facilities (market justice) and uninsured, marginalized and poor can access care in the county, city health institutions as well as public health clinics, and health centers (social justice). The two principles of conflict concerning the vast number of uninsured people are socioeconomically unable to buy private health coverage, and worse do meet Medicaid or Medicare eligibility criteria (Costello, 2020). This conflict is often seen in smaller cities or towns and large rural areas.
Why is it that despite a general sentiment against government involvement in health care, Medicare and Medicaid were created?
This is because there are a good number of poor or the marginalized and older adults in the United States that are considered special groups that could be adequately served through government and its initiatives (Costello, 2020). Besides, the United States health care status was worse than the overall American population that the need for government involvement to improve it.
What are the major distinctions between primary care and specialty care?
Primary care is the immediate or the first-contact care often considered the gate to the healthcare system, longitudinal, focuses on a patient as a whole, follows through the treatment course, advisors and advocates, and plays a crucial role in healthcare cost control, resource utilization and allocation. On the other hand, specialty care is more focused (focuses on a single condition or organ system) and intensive care often the last sort care and follows the primary care or referral from primary care.
What is meant by non-progressor?
Non-progressor is a person who is HIV positive but has CD4 counts above 500 cells/ mm3 and a very low viral load for at least five years and has never used antiretroviral therapy to manage the symptoms.
What is the physiology behind this?
Non-progressors possibly have the defective co-factor, CCR5, which means they lack the functional co-factors that the HIV needs to fuse with the cells expressing CD4 and take over the boy.
What are the names of the two co-receptor proteins identified in cells?
CCR5 and CXCR4
What function do they perform?
They interact with HIV to promote fusion of HIV with cells that express CD4
What was the result in patients who had mutations in the gene which coded for the defective receptor?
They are not infected with HIV regardless of how many times they exposed to it; they are resistant to HIV.
Please identify three reasons why developing a vaccine for HIV has proven to be difficult
- HIV presents a possibility of reverting to a form that can cause disease.
- HIV has a higher replication and mutation rate. It replicates, grows, and changes every time; thus, it is difficult to predict its moves and replication. A single HIV has numerous variations, which become even more as it spread to populations.
- HIV integrates. It inserts its antigenic materials into the chromosome of the person it infects. Thus implies that it can only be killed by destroying the cells with its antigenic materials, which will mean killing T cells.
What year did scientists begin testing DNA vaccines for HIV in humans?
Testing of HIV vaccines began in the early 1990s and occurred in mice.
Please describe one thing from this video which you were most interested in
I was particularly interested in how HIV itself fails to produce a functioning receptor. It is like a person who wants to eat to get the energy to do a task and fails to eat. However, it is an excellent way that nature uses to protect some human beings.
References
Costello, M. M. (2020). A Social Ethic in US Healthcare: Support in the Writings of Adam Smith. Journal of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences (IRJPMS), 3(2), 25-27.
The patient Eric is described as a long term non-progressor