Is there such a thing as an affordable health insurance? Affordable health insurance is a tricky term, because as we all well know and appreciate what is affordable for me is not necessarily affordable for you too. However, insurance companies and all the other institutions proffering this product have the answer, at least so they say. Affordable health insurance, so they claim, means affordable for each and everyone of us within our parameters of affordability. That means that the word affordability does not refer to one type of health insurance solely. Affordable health insurance is health coverage being offered to us all on each of our terms.
How widespread is Affordable health insurance?
There is a paradox in the expression Affordable health insurance. Surely if health insurance is affordable then it refers to all levels of society. As we all realize that affordable is a relative term and cannot be designated to one layer only otherwise the expression wouldn't be used. Affordable health insurance therefore refers to us all, then if it refers to us all where does it stop. Or doesn't it stop? If it percolates down through society, does it expand its wings laterally and geographically? Affordable health insurance must then cross over from developed countries into developing countries, from the western world to the third world.
Affordable health insurance in Africa
Affordable health insurance in Africa? Can this be true? Affordable health care is a system acceptable in the west and developed countries but a rarity in the third world. If you consider Africa, a populous developing continent with some of the worst healthcare issues in the world, including an AIDS pandemic, malaria, STDs, poor quality healthcare and substandard health education services. Can Affordable health insurance find a home in this context. It's virtually impossible at the current state of affairs, yet various institutions are striving to create a system enabling some form of affordable health insurance.
The issue here is the infrastructure for such a population, where the majority has no means to pay for such insurance.