Equality In Health Care Essay

To understand the scope of equity in health care, a distinction should be drawn between Equity and equality. Equity entails social justice and fairness with consideration social differences or disparities, while equality is sameness. Equality doesn’t take into consideration what exactly is fair regardless of disparities. Nevertheless, the understanding of social justice and fairness differs amongst different people in different settings. Equity in health care can be defined as the absence of disparities in health (and in its key social determinants) that are systematically associated with social advantage/disadvantage. Health inequities systematically put populations who are already socially disadvantaged (for example, by virtue of being poor, female, or members of a disenfranchised racial, ethnic,

This comparison will be enable one to ascertain whether health policies and programmes will lead to improved social justice in health.
Concepts of equity
Describing an equitable situation requires distinctions to be made between the appropriateness of equal and unequal distributions, either of which may constitute “even-handed treatment,” depending on the situation. Equity requires that similar cases be treated in similar ways, and relevantly different cases be treated in different ways. There are two universal concepts of equity:
• Horizontal equity
Horizontal equity refers to equity between people with the same health care needs, i.e equal treatment of equals
• Vertical equity
Vertical equity refers to those with unequal needs should receive different or unequal health care. It is the unequal treatment of unequals, which is justified on the basis of morally relevant factors. However, morally irrelevant factors should not be the basis for applying vertical