Question

In 2-3 paragraphs, discuss the difference between healthcare “needs” and “wants.” How are they the same? How do they differ? Are there any “needs” that could also be considered “wants?” Why or why not?

Answer 1

The traditional understanding of healthcare is that people get sick and medicine provides a cure.Today, that order is often reversed. With society's willingness to pay for ever more care—a willingness demonstrated by the 45-year increase of our spending from $42 billion to more than $2.5 trillion—much of the innovation in healthcare is now about the simultaneous search for new treatments and new conditions that require these treatments. It's not that these new conditions are somehow fake illnesses. Rather, illness is increasingly recognized and often only named when a treatment becomes available.

Taking an example, Erectile-dysfunction (E.D.) medications have all the trappings of healthcare. They require prescriptions written by licensed physicians. They look like any other type of medicine, packaged in the iconic plastic prescription bottles. Medicare (and sometimes Medicaid) and many private insurers will cover E.D. drugs; Viagra and its competitors can legitimately be expensed against tax-advantaged flexible spending and health savings accounts. Don’t get me wrong: Improving the sex lives of older males is a clear social good. But when we first decided to subsidize all healthcare expenses, would we have considered this problem a health issue?

To maintain its continued access to the most generous of customers—private insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid—the healthcare industry must convince us that its services fulfill genuine needs, not merely wants, as all other goods and services do. And once a treatment is considered a need, how can those customers possibly argue it isn't worth paying for?

In a nutshell, the concept of health care has metastatized, "from the urgent treatment of illness to the much broader management of well-being and comfort." To conclude the "needs" and "wants" have changed and most of our "wants" has become our needs. But the wuestion here is: Is it actually the need of the individual or the greediness that made his wants to his/her needs.