Genetic Testing and the US Healthcare System Essay

The U.S. health care system faces challenges that indicate that the people urgently need to be reform. Attention has rightly focused on the approximately 46 million Americans who are uninsured, and on the many insured Americans who face rapid increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. As Congress and the Obama administration consider ways to invest new funds to reduce the number of Americans without insurance coverage, we must simultaneously address shortfalls in the quality and efficiency of care that lead to higher costs and to poor health outcomes. To do otherwise casts doubt on the feasibility and sustainability of coverage expansions and also ensures that our current health care system will continue to have large gaps even for those with access to insurance coverage.

Today uninsured Americans make up approximately 4.2 million people. Because these families cannot afford the high cost of insurance, they do not get the health care needed to maintain good health. They must live with the pain and worry of the problem and when they do get medical care, they assume huge debts and another worry of how to pay for it.

There are many problems with healthcare in America today. One of them including the astronomical cost. According to CDC.ORG in 2007 the average person spends seven thousand four hundred dollars per year on health care alone. This rise in healthcare is extremely detrimental for families, seniors, and people of all ages. With such a high cost of insurance people are forced to make hard choices in

Healthcare in the United States is an interstate system that accounts for 15% of the U.S. GDP and $5,635 per capita. Nearly 45 million – or 1 in 5 – Americans are uninsured. With insurance premiums rising yearly, the number of uninsured Americans projects to continue to climb. While new technologies will increase the efficiency of healthcare, the costs of these new tests and treatments will likely outweigh the savings. As the cost of healthcare rises, many employers will be forced to eliminate health insurance benefits for their employees, further increasing the number of uninsured Americans.

Did you know that in the year of 2012, nearly all of the Americans ages nineteen to sixty-four, which is nearly 85 million Americans that were uninsured? According to healthcareproblems.org , in America healthcare is one of the most talked about and economically challenged problems facing the U.S. today. Health care should be reduced to a reasonable price that which everyone can afford, but people disagree due to laws against it.

These opposite goals thus result in the polarization between insurance companies and their clients, which has in turn lead to monumental costs for both sick and injured Americans as well as insurance companies. Even more so, these opposite goals result in a drastic percentage of Americans who are left insured. With the 45 million Americans as of 2005 who live in the country uninsured, the United States is the only developed nation that still does not have a universal health care policy (Clemmit 1). This statistic demonstrates the sheer quantity of people that need healthcare in America, as well as the urgent need to support these people.

The United States spends more of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on healthcare then any other industrialized country in the world and because of this one would think that the U.S. provides one of the top universal healthcare plans for all citizens without health insurance. Furthermore, the U.S.’s overall health system performance is 37 out of 191 (qtd in U.S. Census Bureau), obviously 37 out of 191 is horrible especially because of the investment made by tax paying citizens. This problem affects a massive amount of Americans. Approximately 40 million Americans are without health insurance and because of the increasing expenditures the numbers of

Genetic testing existed even before the commencement of the Human Genome Project but has rapidly increased in its abilities with the newly discovered information the project provides. The US Task Force describes genetic testing as "the analyses of human DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, and certain metabolites in order to detect heritable disease related genotypes, mutations, phenotypes, or karyotypes for clinical purposes" (Zimmern, 1999). Prior to the advances in genetic testing technology diagnosis of disease was "based upon observation of the patientís condition, supported by the results of laboratory tests on blood and tissue samples" and sometimes a family history study (Mehlman, 1998). Now genetic testing doesnít require such extensive searching. It is possible to detect the presence of or probability of developing genetic disorders. "Diseases amenable to genetic testingÖinclude heritable conditions, acquired genetic conditions and diseases caused by infectious agents" (Mehlman, 1998).

In this biotechnology era, one of the most significant scientific accomplishments has been the completion of the Human Genome Project, which provided us with the necessary tools to access, understand and use our genetic information. All the advances made up to date have opened the doors to new approaches in practicing medicine and health care since genetic testing allows determining the presence of certain markers (genes) that enhance the probability for a patient of developing a genetic condition (Béatrice Godard). Likewise, genetic testing helps in some cases to the early diagnosis and proper treatment of the disease. However, a growing fear and debate about

The number of uninsured Americans is greater than the total population of Canada (Lambrew, Podesta, & Shaw, 2005). Conservative 2004 estimates indicate that there were 41.6 million uninsured persons of all ages (14.5%) and 51.0 million (17.7%) were uninsured for at least part of the year (Cohen, Martinez, & Hao, 2005). By 2013, projections suggest that one in four Americans under the age of 65, nearly 56 million people, will be without health care insurance because coverage will be too expensive (CQ Health beat News, 2005). The United States spends more money on health care than other industrialized nations but is the only one that doesn’t ensure health care coverage for all citizens. Every year,

In the case of BRAC screening an individual with a family history of breast cancer would be genetically screened for a copy of the defective allele. Their DNA would be isolated, amplified, sequenced, and analyzed. If a copy of one of these defective all eles is present, the individual would have a greater likelihood of getting breast cancer than the average individual. Groopman (1998) states "Women who inherit a single defective copy of either BRCA1 or BRCA2 are at a significantly increased risk for bea st and ovarian cancer over the course of their lives."

Linkage analyses performed in the early 1990s, focused mainly on early onset Alzheimer's disease, identified the only fully penetrant mutations known to date to be involved in this disease. Additionally, a strong risk factor was also identified through family-related studies: the E4 allele of APOE was found to increase the risk for Alzheimer's disease in different populations. Originally, traditional approaches to the study of Mendelian diseases relied on genetic linkage studies (a powerful tool used as a way to detect the chromosomal location of disease genes, which is actually based on the observation that genes that reside close on a chromosome remain linked during meiosis).

The first of these issues is the fact that genetics testing has many limitations, some tests struggle to identify the type of gene alteration has been found, it could be anything from Huntington’s disease to down syndrome and a failure to properly diagnose can lead to a mistrust of medical professions not to mention a large personal impact (Lea D 2011). The next issue is the potential for discrimination presented

Today, genetic testing has the ability to predict many different types for disease and hopefully someday may, also, help prevent them, as well. Genes are the building block for our bodies, which n determine everything from our gender to the color of our eyes, as well as, a person height. Today, doctors can test person blood or tissue sample for genetic flaws that, could increase the developing certain diseases, such as, cystic fibrosis, diabetes and different types of cancer, among others. For example, the American Cancer Society states that, a woman has a 12 percent chance of developing breast cancer in her live time, however, the risk increases to 50 to 80 percent chance, if the woman’s genetic test comes back positive for the BRCA ½ gene, which make her genetically, predisposed in get breast cancer. However, in some case genetic testing is not always exact. In addition, it could encourage people to be more aware of subtle signs and symptoms of a disease, along with, inspiring people to make health lifestyle changes, which in turn could lower their risk (Carrnza, 2007).

Genetic screening is a process to analyze blood or skin for the systematic search for persons with a particular genotype in a defined population. It also serves as an important tool of modern preventive medicine. Such screening has the potential to lessen the devastating impact of genetic disease. The purpose is to identify persons whose genotype places them or their offspring at risk [2]. The human race carries 3,000 - 4,000 diseases in its genes. The faulty gene that causes any