IELTS Writing task 2: Pros and cons of private healthcare system

Please rate and give comments on my essay. Thank you so much!

Are profit-oriented hospitals better?

Topic: Health services are the basic necessity for a person. Private companies have made the health services quite costly for ordinary individuals. Do the advantages of private health care outweigh its disadvantages?

Essay:
It is commonly believed that the extravagant price of health care has been attributed to the involvement of private enterprises, despite it being a fundamental need of every resident. The principle advantage of private health hospitals is that they offer better facilities than state-own institutions, while the main disadvantage is their high treatment cost making ordinary people impossible to access the healthcare services they need. This essay agrees that its demerit outweigh the merit.

To begin with, providing high-grade equipment and labour force are the principle advantage of private medical care. This is because a private company makes enormous profits from the treatment fee of its patients, which is relatively higher than that in public hospitals. Consequently, a big proportion of this profit is invested back in equipping more advanced medical machines and facilities, as well as hiring and training top-notch specialists to serve its clients. For instance, in 2018, MedCare company allocated almost 55% of its profit to purchase MRI machines and building new treatment rooms for its patients.

However, the main disadvantage of the private healthcare system is the high price itself. To be more specific, only the affluent have enough money to pay for the examination and operation which are conducted in private hospitals, while a person with low salaries may struggle to pay for medical bills. For example, a survey in 2019 indicates that an ordinary office worker would need up to one year to compensate for the money spent on one visit to a private hospital for general health examination. As a result, such poor people would not have equal access to the services in profit-making hospitals, despite receiving medical treatment is a basic necessity.

In conclusion, although profit-oriented hospitals may offer equipments with higher quality than government-owned clinics, their high medical costs still outweigh this merit. If the private sector offers a supportive policy to lower the treatment fee, more people would have equal access to its state-of-the-art facilities which it provides.

outweighs
principle -> principal
a general
equipments

You misunderstood the prompt requirement. This essay is not instructed to be written as an A/D essay. This essay asks an opinion question that you have to respond to:

Do the advantages of private health care outweigh its disadvantages? Pick one side to defend in the essay. Why should you pick only one side to discuss when the question asks "do the advantages... its advantages?" The answer to that question lies in the discussion instruction itself. Had the prompt asked you to accomplish the following: "Discuss the advantages and disadvantages and give a personal opinion", then you should have definitely done the A/D format discussion. Since the question asked you to pick one side, then this is a single opinion essay, not a comparison essay. So your TA approach is all wrong for the essay and will definitely pull you back from achieving a 5 band score.

Since you gave a direct response to the question, which shows you have a given opinion on the topic, the examiner will score your essay based only on the part that you wrote, which supports the stance you provided in the paraphrase. Therefore, your essay will fall under the minimum 250 word count and suffer points deductions for that. You have to learn to decipher what kind of essay you have to write in response to the given instruction or discussion recommendation. There are several ways of discussing this topic, but only one approach to the discussion question. That is the singular opinion approach.

Based on the error in your approach, I will refrain from scoring this essay. It will not achieve a satisfactory band score. I would rather score your next essay, which I hope, will show a better understanding and approach to the given discussion topic.

@Holt
Thank you so much for your feedback! I wouldn't have realized that without your help. I've always had difficulties distinguishing A/D type and opinion type. Hope you'd kindly grade my essay again.