Greg Silver Analysis

Though the American healthcare system has made big steps towards providing affordable healthcare for everyone, there remains a growing population of people who fall through the system’s cracks. These people are the medically underserved. They are typically the victims of unfortunate life circumstances that has left them without health insurance, or with insurance that provides inadequate coverage. The underserved also includes those who have trouble accessing healthcare for any reason. Anyone with illnesses or disabilities that require assistance beyond their coverage, or people who live in remote areas where healthcare services are sparse fall under this title. The term also does not exclude those who have sufficient insurance and resources, but struggle to understand and navigate our increasingly complex system of healthcare.

The affordable care act truly contains over a thousand pages of reforms to the insurance and health care industries in order to combat rising health care costs that are manifesting all around the country. Throughout the developing statistics pertaining to the American that did not receive health care insurance, it was stated that as of 2013 there were close to around 44 million Americans who went without health insurance, this can be a little less than sixteen percent of the United States population (Cite). So let’s take a look at the majority of those individuals that are unisured, they

One of this health care’s programs objective is to limit the number of uninsured (Shi & Singh, 2015). This controversial healthcare plan incorporates a privately funded insurance which is paid for through employment and solely by the patient and a publicly funded insurance by the government. Medicare is provided for senior citizens 65 and older, and Medicaid is provided for low income citizens. The federal government and state government both partake in the funding of Medicaid. Although insurance is provided to the low income through Medicaid, the United States continues to suffer from cost escalation spending 17.1 percent of GDP on healthcare in 2013, a 50 percent more than the second nation (Commonwealth, n.d.) The high cost and limited coverage continues to spark up the conversation for a

Large populations of Americans are uninsured mainly because of the high cost of insurance. Majority of the uninsured are the low-income working families’. The adults represent a higher percentage of the uninsured than children. Before the law, you could be denied coverage or treatment because you had been sick in the past, be dropped mid-treatment for making a simple mistake on your application, hence, the Affordable Care Act was implemented into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barrack Obama to make sure that every American irrespective of their status will be insured and have full access to proper health care benefits, rights and protection(1). To understand the

In today’s day and age, American households can all agree that health insurance is not a luxury, but a necessity. Without it, costs of emergency room visits and prescription medicines can be financially devastating. However, in the past many families and individuals have taken the risk of not being insured due to the high cost of the insurance itself. To attempt to reform this unfair system, the Obama administration signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010. The law, coined “Obamacare,” has received much opposition due to its expansion government programs and increase in spending. It brings to question how much the government should be involved in an area that for the majority of America’s history, has been

The foremost concept of the Affordable Care Act was to allow for more poverty-stricken Americans to be able to gain access to health care. Yet, if you widen the amount of people can get free health care, who is meant to pay for them? In order for this new program to work, the US government needed enough young and healthy Americans to pay into the costs of having health care. However, problems began when Americans were finding that it was less expensive to just take the penalty for not having health care. Elementary office secretary, Catherine Moore explained in a personal interview, how a co-worker had also come across this same realization. “I worked with a lady that during the first year [of the Affordable Care Act] it was cheaper for her to take the penalty than to pay for insurance.” So now, not only is the government missing out on money that could have been used to support those who could not afford health care, but it is also encouraging healthy people who may not

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The Affordable Care Act also nicknamed as “ObamaCare” faced huge amounts of adversity and challenges on its way to being ratified and upheld by the Supreme Court. Some of these arguments highlight the disadvantages of free social services, the escalating federal deficit, and the altering the healthcare industry’s landscape completely. Healthcare is generally defined as providing for the wellbeing of a personal through medical services. In America, all services come with a price, and healthcare has become an industry that is nearly only about the money and less about the patient. Needless to say, the quality of care that a patient receives is almost

In 2008, upon the commencement of The Affordable Care Act, the idea was to help millions of uninsured Americans gain health insurance, especially those who are at or just above the federal poverty level. Although the idea behind a universal health care system was great at the time, many citizens are struggling to find a doctor that will accept the subsidized health care insurance, such as Medicaid, and Passport. Furthermore, doctors choose to opt-out of accepting government based health insurance because the reimbursement rates are too low. “It is estimated that private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and the ACA exchange plans are paying about $0.60.” (Harvey 1) That shows that the government based subsidized programs are significantly lower than the average market value. A

Universal Health care has been the topic of discussion among politicians and Americans today and has shown zero signs of slowing down in the future. The United States is considered one of the very few countries that spends an extensive amount of money on healthcare yet people are still struggling to receive care that’s needed and dying at a alarming rate due to the fact that they cannot afford insurance coverage for themselves and their families. In March of 2010 President Barack Obama implemented the Affordable Care Act, providing millions of Americans who previously did not have health insurance the ability to acquire and purchase premiums, however there are still some serous issues surrounding its implementation.” While the president

Ehrenreich, disoriented and maddened by her rash, turned to her healthcare provider from her original life, managing to obtain medications that relieved her condition. If she did not have that back up resource to tap into, she would be probably be in much more discomfort. Despite how proud most Americans are of the Declaration of Independence and its well-known “unalienable rights” of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”, the United States is one of the only major countries that does not guarantee healthcare to the people as a right of citizenship. Americans pay more than enough taxes for universal single-payer healthcare, but we are far from enjoying reliable coverage (Woolhandler 2002). The healthcare system in the United States is complex and fundamentally broken. But various groups of politicians, industries, parties, and people are distracted with pointing to specific targets: the federal government, state governments, public and private hospitals, insurance providers, pharmaceutical and medical equipment providers, doctors and nurses, and the legal system. All these agents have a role in causing this healthcare beast we have now, and it is unlikely that they can ever work together to solve the issues. For the poor, it means that they cannot afford much healthcare. Injuries have to be “walked off” and an emergency room visit is an impossible expense. Although Medicare has reduced the burden somewhat, the poor still receive sub-par healthcare compared to the rest of society. Chronic pain has to be “managed by Excedrin and Advil, compensated for with cigarettes and, in one or two cases and then only on weekends, with booze” (Ehrenreich 82). The poor is often criticized for substance abuse, be it drugs, alcohol, or more nefarious stimulants. However, Ehrenreich makes it clear that these are necessary to dull the pain acquired from their work. For many of these low-wage

Health care reform and access to insurance have been staples of the American political agenda ever since the end of World War II. From President Truman’s call for universal coverage in the late 1940’s to the creation of Medicaid and Medicare to the Affordable Care Act, both parties have debated how to lower the rate of uninsured Americans. After nearly 70 years of debate in Washington and beyond, the number of Americans with health insurance has certainly grown (Miller, 2014). However, the number of people in the United States without coverage is still unacceptably high and a problem that should be addressed with a great deal of urgency and care.

The proposed health care reform bill attempts to change issues of public policy and health care management for the poor and uninsured. Many leaders from the Democratic Party are actively engaging in policy-making to fix what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) calls a “‘dysfunctional’ health care system” (2009). Currently, the U.S. health care system denies people with pre-existing conditions from receiving care. Another problem with the system is that the health insurance that some employers offer may be so expensive that their employees cannot afford it. Any cuts in Medicaid may mean that physicians have fewer incentives to provide adequate care for the poor. These are some of the many problems that the Affordable Health Choices Act attempts to address. Fiscally conservative political and business groups oppose this measure because they believe that any changes in public policy and health care management might affect them negatively.

Many people in the United States at some point in their life pay for health insurance or health care. Usually the people who pay for health insurance is either retired from work or are in their primes with children to care for. There are many other kinds of health care associations in the U.S., but there’s a major health insurance cooperation in today’s society that is causing problems in America’s economy and causing major drops in unemployment rates everywhere in the U.S., named after the 44th president of the United States of America, President Barack Obama, Obamacare is a type of health care system that is outrageously expensive and money consuming, putting Americans into serious debt. It had once been seen as a plan to help Americans

Health care in the United States is driven by a patchwork of services and financing. Americans access health care services in a variety of ways — from private physicians’ offices, to public hospitals, to safety-net providers. This diverse network of health care providers is supported by an equally diverse set of funding streams. The United States spends almost twice as much on health care as any other country, topping $2 trillion each year. (WHO.INT 2000) However, even with overall spending amounting to more than $7,400 per person, millions of individuals cannot access the health care services they need.(Foundation 2009) So when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a the Affordable Care Act or ACA) was passed in the summer

Under a free-market system, health care is characterized in three ways – cost, access, and quality. In the United States, a mixed economic system that favors a free market system, health care is characterized as high cost, low access, and high quality. As such, these dichotomies pose an imperfect, inefficient scenario – the high cost and low access of health care lead people to not purchase insurance, while the high quality of health care drives people to still receive health care services. As a result, millions of Americans are currently uninsured, yet still utilizing various health care services, and are unable to pay their medical bills. This poses yet another conundrum - how can uninsured individuals receive medical care without paying for it? More importantly, who ends up paying for these services? Having recognized this gap between receiving medical care and paying for medical care,