Homelessness is a major social, economic, and, most importantly, healthcare issue. There are currently hundreds of thousands of homeless people in the United States. If homeless people have already suffered greatly from a number of diseases before the pandemic, such as tuberculosis, HIV, drug addiction, and alcoholism, today COVID-19 is most prevalent among them (Canoso, 2021). The current American healthcare system is difficult to navigate under, even with the best of circumstances. For homeless people, the only medical care is being provided by hospital emergency departments. Emergency departments are costly and, since most homeless people do not have insurance, the money spent caring for these people can reach millions of dollars (Jain, 2021). However, even this amount of money does not solve the issue of homelessness; it only provides a temporary solution for people on the streets suffering. The current system of providing healthcare to the homeless is exceedingly expensive (Jain, 2021). In addition, it yields little to no actual result in caring for these people. This system requires a drastic change of the approach of solving the issue of homelessness to ensure people’s safety and sustainability of the economy.
The complexity of caring for homeless people and the issues that led them to this state requires a highly coordinated partnership of major healthcare organizations. According to Tsai et al. (2017), homeless people, provided with improved housing outcomes and primary care services, move to a stable, healthy state relatively fast. As such, relocating the money to provide shelter and improve housing for homeless people would ensure a positive result of spending the budget to care for the homeless. However, this solution is unobtainable in the nearest future, and until the majority of homeless people can be housed, the rate of homelessness will continue to grow. In this case of unavailability of sheltering or housing, mobile street medical teams could bring healthcare to the people in need. This would require the cooperation of major healthcare organizations to design and develop such teams. Such a measure would ensure the efficiency of spending the budget to provide healthcare. Funding the teams of physicians to provide the availability of medical assistance to homeless people would require the budget that is already being spent; however, it would yield actual results.
The change that can both provide effective care for homeless people and relocate the budget, making the most use of the money spent should be aimed at the long-term result. Most problems of the people living on the streets cannot be solved in an emergency setting. Compared to non-homeless, fewer homeless people keep appointments and take medications (Canoso, 2021). The complex behavioral and physical health needs of these people have to be met by the system of corresponding complexity. By providing the care now, the future need for it would be reduced proportionally with the decrease in the rate of homelessness. Since most homeless people are in no condition to attend medical facilities on a regular basis to achieve the long-term effects of the treatment they require, healthcare should be provided to them nonetheless. With more homeless people treated, the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases would decrease. Spending the budget on actual care for them now, resulting in the improvement of life of these people, means the reduction of the need for the said budget in the future.
References
Canoso, J. J. (2021). Homelessness: cause and effects. Clinical rheumatology, 40(1), 1-2.
Jain, S. H. (2021). Homelessness is a healthcare issue: Why don’t we treat it as one? Forbes. Web.
Tsai, J., O’Toole, T., & Kearney, L. K. (2017). Homelessness as a public mental health and social problem: New knowledge and solutions. Psychological services, 14(2), 113.