A Case Against Health Insurance

The Affordable Care Act has made many positive changes for uninsured and underinsured citizens. With the addition of a program called Health Insurance Marketplace, it is now possible for uninsured people in every state to purchase private insurance plans, those making under 400% or less of the Federal Poverty Level will be able to have tax credits making insurance more affordable (Lathrop & Hodnicki, 2014). Insurance companies are no longer allowed to cancel a policy or raise rates when a client gets sick. Insurance companies cannot refuse coverage to individuals with preexisting conditions such as cancer (“Quality Improvement,” 2015). Insurance companies now must cover preventive care and screenings allowing diseases like cancer to be caught early (“Quality Improvement,” 2015). Research has shown that through health screenings

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama in March of 2010. This law provides equal access to medical care, lowered health care costs and eliminates denial of coverage of pre-existing conditions to the millions of the uninsured and insured Americans that were without and denied health care coverage. Patients who were denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions can now look forward to relief and great improvement because their illness is covered in the new policy, and care is now provided for them at next to minimal cost (Stehly,

In the United States, Americans have been given the opportunity to obtain affordable insurance. Everyone in the world would like to be able to go to the doctor and receive quality and affordable healthcare, and be able to purchase the things the physician say you need in order to stay healthy. Many people in America with different medical diagnosis are not covered by their insurance company even under the new health care reform law, because their medical need does not fit the medical necessity criteria for covered health care services. The current health care reform have various positive results, but the Act have many negative concerns that need restructuring when it comes to defining what medical necessities are.

As it stands insurance companies now can no longer refuse coverage based on preexisting conditions or health status. In other words insurance is now guaranteed issue.

We estimate that 27% of adult Americans under the age of 65 have health conditions that would likely leave them uninsurable if they applied for individual market coverage under pre-ACA underwriting practices that existed in nearly all states. While a large share of this group has coverage through an employer or public coverage where they do not face medical underwriting, these estimates quantify how many people could be ineligible for individual market insurance under pre-ACA practices if they were to ever lose this coverage. This is a conservative estimate as these surveys do not include sufficient detail on several conditions that would have been declinable before the ACA (such as HIV/AIDS, or hepatitis C).  Additionally, millions more have

In the article “Insured, but Not Covered,” Rosenthal points out that, despite being insured through Empire Blue Cross, Karen Pineman had to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket for a physical therapist when she broke her ankle while playing tennis, simply because her insurer refused to cover it. There are many more cases such as Pineman’s, where patients are forced to pay out of pocket since their insurance policy does not cover their specific treatments. The expenses can amount to thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for treatments of more serious illnesses such as cancer. This is a severe flaw in our current healthcare system, one that could devastate individuals such as Pineman, sinking them deeply in debt and forcing them into

Right now, there are over forty million Americans are without healthcare coverage and millions more that are underinsured. Their families and they are struggling to afford medical care that should actually be provided to them. There are natural born rights that should be provided to all humans just because it’s morally right. Humans, being an intelligent species, should know that there are certain things that are needed to progress as a whole. Affordable healthcare coverage is one of those things that should be guaranteed to everyone. The United States is considered to be the greatest country to have ever been. A country that is supposedly home to the best hospitals and medical services does not even offer them to most of their people. Money is consistently being wasted and spent on healthcare that doesn’t even benefit the majority of the population. Health care coverage can mean life or death for a lot of people. Healthcare should be a human right; it should be affordable to everyone, regardless of how much money they make.

Mandatory health insurance is a government healthcare policy of Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is mandated for uninsured individuals to purchasing health insurance plan either from ACA’s health insurance exchange or from the private insurance. This mandating was installed in efforts to expand healthcare access to all, regardless of their income and the existing health status (The Requirement to Buy Coverage Under the Affordable Care Act, 2015, December 8). Under this act, federal law now requires each person to purchase a health insurance plan or pay a tax penalty. Persons with low household income are only able to purchase plans with low monthly premiums, but with high annual deductibles.

Leading up to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act the United States of America had been in a major recession with consistent increases in medical costs in conjunction with increased rates of uninsured populations. Pre-existing conditions were a major concern for people wanting to move around in the job market or shop

With the implementation of the Patient Affordable Care Act, it is estimated that 32-34 million previously uninsured Americans will have access to health insurance by 2015 (Kovner & Knickman, 2011) (Hemphill, 2013). Additionally, those with preexisting conditions (asthma, diabetes, heart disease) will no longer be denied coverage or dropped from policies if they become sick. As a result, insurers will no longer be able to refuse to pay for otherwise-covered medical care and services due to a pre-existing condition or charge more because of a pre-existing condition in the family (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2012). Although, the Patient Affordable Care Act will have considerable positive impacts in regard to access to health insurance and coverage for those with preexisting conditions, the health workforce supply will be unable to meet the oncoming demand for services.

In the modern era, health is an essential topic that deserves all people to notice. Relatively, health insurance fee is getting higher and higher as time goes by because of the increasing number of the sick and costs of medicine, which is difficult for those in poverty or live with a passable standard of work to pay such an expensive expense. But health insurance is crucial when people get sick. Take a simple example to illustrate. Eli Saslow (2011) in the book Ten Letters shows Natoma Canfield’s story about health care insurance. Though Natoma Canfield’s pre-existing condition makes her rejected by nearly all insurance companies and make her live in a miserable life, she still wants to have a health insurance. As time goes by, the rate of health insurance fee keeps inflating until she can’t pay

The problem of people die needlessly seems bad enough, yet thinking how the overbearing insurance companies are able to deny the health insurance coverage for patients with cancer is as incredibly disturbing as the dying needlessly. A national survey in 2007 suggest that as many as 12 million Americans were discriminated by insurance companies because they had pre-existing conditions or illnesses. (Obama) The wreckage in our broken market of health insurance seems to be dominated by business rather than human morality.

Health defects or adversity prevails void of age, color or creed. Terry Reynolds stated that “It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right.” Comprehensive healthcare is an umbrella of security of pleasant survival. Hence, healthcare is vital for longevity. The healthcare coverage in the US is covered by various insurances. People in employment are covered through their employers and individual choices on their own types of insurances. The constraint to sound health care is the affordability of types of insurances. Prior to the Obamacare which somehow caters for across the board healthcare system via stipulated insurance types, a 2012 families USA study shows that more than 130,000 Americans died between 2005 and 2010 because of their lack of health insurance. The issue of cause is evident that due to lack of ability to enroll or maintain health care at a cost concluded in the cost of lives. There was a 40 percent increased risk of death among the uninsured. (equating to 44,789 excess deaths annually) The alarming mortality levels expressed by these two types of research amply exhibit that void of consistent health care is a contributing factor for the inhibition of human longevity. Nonetheless, the emphasis for longevity may not be

The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured reports that there were 32 million uninsured Americans in 2014 (Henry J. Kaiser Family

Why does insurance matter? People without insurance are more likely to go without preventive care, to delay or forgo medical care, and to die prematurely. When sick, the uninsured may turn to emergency rooms for care, where oftentimes they are charged more for services than insured patients. And when uninsured patients can’t afford their medical bills, the cost of this care is passed on to the insured in the form of higher premiums