Equity in Health Care

In the case of health and health care, a society is dealing with a sector in which, partly due to customs, image may be more important than reality. Because some care deals with matters of life and death, because of fear, because of the love of technology, as well as because health care often does help some individuals and therefore each individual can hope that the care will help them, people have come to believe that health care makes a significant contribution to health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), equity is the absence of avoidable differences among groups of people that may differ socially, economically, demographically or geographically. Critiques of a health care system usually subject it to two criteria: one concern is efficiency and the other has to do with fairness or equity. The battle of equity and equality in health care is just starting to be fought in the US.