Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hannah Neyer
Mr. Sassin
HUM 200
25 April 2017
When first starting this project, globalization was thought of as the sharing of ideas and
how to apply them across national borders. This can be demonstrated in many ways such as in
the environment, economy, political, social, and cultural areas (Mukherjee and Krieckhas 152).
This relates very well to the idea of human wellbeing which is the state of being happy, healthy,
and prosperous for your overall health. There are also five different elements of human wellbeing
Globalization is a lot of times thought about in the business and economy since because
this is where a lot of what we know as globalization originates from. This has everything to do
with peoples financial and career wellbeing. For instance if a factory moves production
overseas because it is cheaper to produce a product in China, then this will cause some people to
loss there job thus have no income so thus there financial wellbeing would be severally
influenced as well as their career wellbeing because they would no longer have a career. One
could also look on this positively, because the company has moved production to china where it
is cheaper to make the good, the good now can be sold for less money than before. Depending on
the product this could greatly impact ones physical wellbeing for the better as well as their
financial wellbeing because the product now costs less than it did originally. This also can
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There is some controversy between people as weather globalization is good for our
economy or if it is bad. Authors Nisha Mukherjee and Jonathan Krieckhaus state that Critics
argue that globalization leads to economic stagnation, greater vulnerability to economic shocks,
diminishes sovereignty, and higher income inequality (151). This is because if the economy
becomes so depended on other country for its progression eventually there is no compaction for
this economy which leads to stagnation. Also because of vast globalization if one economy takes
a hit then so does the whole worlds economy which is not good for anyone. On the other side of
this Devon Herrick states that Global competition could lower the cost of some medical
procedures. At the same time, increase international competition for quality medical personnel
(22). This article thinks that because of the compaction between hospitals and countries that this
will lower costs of health care and create competition which would be good for the whole
industry to improve. As of right now hospitals are not competing on an international scale. Most
are just competing on a national scale and with medical tourism this could case hospitals to look
past there national borders to other hospitals that werent opponents before and challenge them
As of right now, many of the hospitals in the United States do not compete directly with
hospitals from other nations. Most of the time people think that people are traveling to the United
States to get better medical care, but many people are finding that for some medical procedures it
is cheaper to go out of country to have the procedure performed. This brings up the idea of
medical tourism which according to medical tourism.com it is the act of traveling outside ones
own area to receive health care (1). This can include most major medical procedures such as
heart bypass, hip replacement, knee replacement, gastric bypass, and many more. There are more
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and more people who are going to other countries to get cheaper medical procedures with the
same competence and sterility as in the United States. The down side of this is that the majority
of the insurance companies in the United States will not pay for someone to go overseas to get a
medical procedure done even with the extreme price cut in other countries.
It is argued that medical tourism should be paid for by insurance because it can save the
insurance company as well as the individual money that could be better used somewhere else.
Also people pay into this system to insure that they have medical coverage for medical
procedures. If the person who is paying into this system chooses to have a medical procedures
performed in a place where it would cost less than in the traditional setting the argument is then
that insurance should cover the procedure even if there in a different country (Herrick 24).
Others think that insurance companies shouldnt have to pay for procedures done
overseas because they dont know what kind of facilities that the hospital has. Also upon coming
back into the United States physicians in the United States might not except that patient back into
their practice because of the liability of dealing with a possible mistakes that the doctor in the
mother country might have caused (Herrick 25). Another aspect is the in increases the amount of
business that the United States hospitals receive because without the option of the insurance
companies paying for out of country medical procedures one would have to go to a hospital in
Insurance is also an issue with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). TCM is based on
the Understanding of the human body is based on the holistic understanding of the universe
(Introduction 1). Because of this the treatment of diseases is not based on the symptoms that the
person presents with they are treated by differentiation of syndromes (Introduction 1). TCM
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includes procedures such as acupuncture which has been shown to decrease pain, treatment of
some diseases, and more. There are many people who say that they want to try these different
aspects of health care but almost all of the insurance companys do not cover treatment of TCM.
Many say that this is due to that fact that there is not enough credible research done on the issue
for the insurance companies to be sure that it is worth covering these treatments. The research
that has been done to date has not been able to determine whether the effect on the human body
is real or if it is just the placebo effect (Giordano, Hutchison, and Benedikter, 32).
It is also argued that we need these other ways of treating people to be able to really treat
the problem and not just put a band aid over a bullet wound. In the article written by James
What becomes more clearly evident is that any definition of health seeks to acknowledge
the complex, integrative nature of person and the need for multiple dimension of
medicine to sustain such integrity. This fortifies the need for medicine to address both
disease and illness though preventive, curative, and palliative/healing practices (32-33).
This quote talks about how we need more than just care we need to address not just that they are
sick and how to get them better, but also what caused them to get this sickness and how can we
prevent them from getting worse, getting it again, or in some instances getting it at all.
At the end of this project our ideas of globalization had changed from what they first
started out to be. Now we can expand on our original ideas of globalization to encompass also
ideas, practices, religions, customs, teaching, and even health care to all areas of the world. With
this knowledge we can better understand a variety of methods and how they can best be used to
Work Cited
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Giordano, James. Hutchison, Paul. Benediter, Roland. Culture, Sustainability, and Medicine in
the Twenty-First Century. Re-grounding the Focus of Medicine Amidst the Current
Global Systemic Shift and the Forces of the Market:Elements for a Contemporary Social
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4060258
Herrick, Devon. Medical Tourism: Global Competition in Health Care. National Center for
http://www.medicaltourism.com/Forms/medicaltourismguide/medicaltourismguide.aspx
Political Science Review, vol. 33, No. 2, 2012, pp. 150-170 JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41428098
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